INDIANAPOLIS —
A couple of columns ago, I posed a question about why most Indiana polling places on primary election day had so few customers.
I’m still hearing from readers eager to answer that question.
In my last column, I quoted some readers who saw voting as almost sacred obligation.
For them, the fact that only 19 percent of Indiana’s 4.4 million registered voters cast their ballots on primary day was cause for shame.
But most of the responses I’ve gotten are from people not only willing to confess to not voting, but somewhat surprised by those who still do.
While their words differed, the theme of their responses was often the same: They don’t want to be associated with anything so nasty as politics or politicians.
Many said they didn’t vote in the primary because they didn’t want the tag that would come with it: In having to ask for either a Democrat or Republican ballot — as required in primary voting — they feared or loathed the idea of being seen as loyal to a party.
“Never missed a national election!” declared one man who described himself as an “independent” voter who avoided primaries like the plague.
Another reader said she didn’t vote in the primary because she heard that if she voted as either a Republican or Democrat in May, she’d be bound to vote that way in the general election in November.
That’s not true, but I’m not sure that was her real reason; she also said politicians made decisions that had “little impact on my daily life.”
There’s something to be said for her point of view: We have a government in place, that for all its faults, doesn’t collapse like some Third World nation when power changes hands.
Maybe that’s why one reader wrote: “I didn’t have it written on my calendar,” addding: “It skipped my mind.”
The most discouraging response came from a woman who has worked the polls on primary days in the past, but now was sick of politics.
She described how she’d felt hounded “ALL day long” by poll workers from the other party who trash-talked the politicians she admired.
She just didn’t see the point of voting in a county dominated by one political party and so few contested races. “I and my husband are both patriotic,” she wrote, noting that “all the men in my family have served in the Armed Forces.”
But neither she nor her husband voted. I hate to end on a note of defeat, but the “no vote” wins out.
The next question: What’s the antidote for voter apathy and cyncism? Let me know what you think. Email me at maureen.hayden@indianamediagroup.com.
Maureen Hayden is the Indiana Statehouse bureau chief for CNHI, the parent company of the Tribune-Star. She can be reached at maureen.hayden@indianamediagroup.com.
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STATE OF THE STATEHOUSE: Many say they don’t vote in primary because of tag that comes with it
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