Good grief. I think I heard on the news today that less than 7% of registered voters in the City of Sarasota bothered to vote in yesterday’s election. On the ballot were the issues of whether to have a strong mayor and which people the citizens of Sarasota want governing them and making laws and decisions that will undoubtedly affect every aspect of their lives.
Sarasota has a population of about 55,000, I think. About 12,600 people voted yesterday. That’s about 22% of the populace. That’s dismal, abysmal, just plain mal — which means “bad” in French!
I guess all those hopeful thoughts that the presidential election would herald a new era of citizens engaging in and taking responsibility for their democracy was a bunch of happy horse-poo. It makes me think back to a column I wrote back in 2006 — a portion of which is excerpted here:
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A nation of sheep (originally published September 6, 2006)
Take a bow, Sarasota. You couldn’t get off your couches long enough to even symbolically salute the very tenets of democracy our American soldiers are dying for overseas.
Yeah, you really know how to “support the troops.”
Don’t tell me it’s because it was only a midterm. Don’t tell me it was the day after a long weekend. Don’t tell me anything.
Everything I or anybody else needs to know is what the polls told us.
Sarasota doesn’t vote. Less than 25 percent of registered voters bothered to show up at the polls.
Sarasota’s looking a lot like an electorate of sheep — fluffy, mostly white, benign little cud-chewers — mindlessly derailing democracy.
“A nation of sheep,” Edward R. Murrow predicted, “”will beget a government of wolves.”
Let the bleating begin.
(To read the original column in its entirety, check it out here at Sheepish in Sarasota)