Voter apathy points to a broken system

With all the ballots counted, the primary is over.

For the 25,880 people who bothered to vote, that means something.

For the almost 78 percent of registered voters who received a ballot in the mail but didn’t manage to get it back to the auditor, it means nothing at all.

Completing a ballot, slipping it in the double envelope and dropping it in the box somewhere near your home, or putting postage on it, was too much to ask of more than 3/4 of our fellow citizens.

The cost to the county of mailing out all those ballots that languished and then were discarded, if it was only 75 cents a ballot (I don’t know the actual cost, this is purely hypothetical) was $68,083.50 No matter what the cost, those 90,778 individuals chose not to vote.

Those who did vote had an outsized influence on the election. I don’t think the election system is working, and it is costing the tax payers an awful lot of money. No matter that it was “just a primary “ and “not a presidential election year”, these are repeated excuses that don’t hold up under scrutiny. The system is broken and something needs a major overhaul.

Olympia

This story was originally published August 14, 2015 at 11:45 AM with the headline "Voter apathy points to a broken system."