More thoughts about Toledo voter turnout - April 2014

"Give me a national holiday for election day ..."

Does that mean a day off from work? If so, would that be a holiday only on presidential elections or every November general election? If the latter, then the 75 percent of the eligible voting public who does not vote would love the holiday idea.

Is the goal of the election day holiday to make it easier to vote and/or increase voter turnout?

What about other elections that occur in March, May, and September? Are those holidays too?

At least locally, voter turnout appeared to be higher in the past when it was "harder" to vote. In olden days, most people actually had to vote on election day.

Toledo's primary for mayor and city council at-large was held in September 2013, and Toledo's voter turnout was only around 15 percent. That includes all types of voting and not just what occurs on election day.

If the goal of an election day holiday is to increase voter turnout, then we need local election day holidays for primaries too. 15 percent??

If you believe that voting is important, then locally, I would consider the election year that involves choosing a mayor and the six city council at-large seats to be Toledo's most important election. Yet Toledo's voter turnout for the November 2013 election was only 25 percent.

Both losers in the 2005 and 2009 Toledo mayoral elections had more votes than the winner in the 2013 election.

2005:
Carty Finkbeiner	47,351	61%
Jack Ford	29,169	38%
	76,520
-
2009:
Mike Bell	35,118	52%
Keith Wilkowski	31,987	48%
	67,105
-
2013: unofficial
Mike Collins	28,002	56.5%
Mike Bell	21,536	43.5%
-	49,537

In 2013, nearly 27,000 fewer votes were cast for the mayor's race compared to eight years ago.

#toledo - #politics