In case you were unaware, there was a state primary last night. Don't feel bad if you didn't know or forgot to vote, because you are in strong company.
On both the federal and state levels, politicians and voters alike have accepted the fact that not every citizen feels compelled to carry out their democratic duty and allow their voice to be heard in election periods. However, Madison's Tuesday primary promises to be a new low for voter turnout, even rivaling UW-Madison's student turnout for student government elections.
The reason? With the numerous occurrences of uncontested races and one-party contests, the primary offers little sense of significance or duty from the average citizen, completely draining any initiative to go out to the local polling stations. For once, political apathy is the fault of the system, not the uninterested voter.
Both U.S. Rep. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., and Republican hopeful Peter Theron are the only candidates for the second congressional seat for their respective parties. In the 77th District, only state Rep. Spencer Black, D-Madison, is on the ballot for either party. Some races, such as the 81st District Representative, have only one party running against itself, thus making the primary the decider over the actual election in November. In all, only three of the 13 districts on the ballot have contested races, and contested is a generous term. At 4 o'clock yesterday afternoon, the voting turnout was a dismal 4 percent in the entire Madison area. As of 7 o'clock last night, only five ballots had been processed at the Memorial Union polling location. The polls closed at 8 p.m., just for some perspective.
In these instances, Tuesday's primary is reduced to a virtually meaningless exercise in pairing down candidates, most of which are predetermined or landslide races anyways. While polling officials claim that these primaries serve as a good warm-up"" to the elections in November, the primaries have become unnecessary and not worth the labor or cost. Just ask the pollsters at Memorial Union how it feels when the number of votes barely exceeds the number of people working the site. And although the county clerk's office was hesitant to give exact costs of running primaries such as this, they did claim that each municipality was responsible for the respective cost of these essentially worthless exercises in politics.
Instead of continuing the charade that most primaries have become, polling officials should eliminate these primaries and pursue a system that expands the November ballot to include candidates that reach the necessary requirements for inclusion on the primary ballot. While this may lead to larger and longer November ballots, it will invariably be easier than keeping the current primary format, an event that is struggling to even bring in its projected 15 percent voter turnout. Instead of costing municipalities the funds and labor of moderating these poorly-attended semi-finals to the November election, officials could encourage voters to show up when their vote actually makes a difference.
