More thoughts about Toledo voter turnout - April 2014

bq. _"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":http://toledotalk.com/cgi-bin/tt.pl/article/164721/2013_mayoral_election_results_in_Toledo_and_Perrysburg 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,":http://toledotalk.com/cgi-bin/tt.pl/article/164721/2013_mayoral_election_results_in_Toledo_and_Perrysburg#2013_compared_to_1993 most people actually had to vote on election day.

Toledo's most recent primary for mayor and city council at-large was held in September 2013, and Toledo's voter turnout was "only":http://toledotalk.com/cgi-bin/tt.pl/article/161788/2013_Toledo_Elections#Sep_Turnout  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.

--(culling more info from past posts)--

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

table{width:300px;}.
|*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%|
|-|49,538||

In 2013, nearly 27,000 fewer votes were cast for the Toledo mayor's race compared to 2005. That seems like a dramatic drop-off for only eight years. 

In the November 1993 Toledo mayoral election, Carty Finkbeiner "defeated":http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1350&dat=19940206&id=4ScxAAAAIBAJ&sjid=WgMEAAAAIBAJ&pg=5876,1405276 Mike Ferner by 672 votes. In that election, *92,470* votes were cast.

In the November 2013 Toledo mayoral election, *49,538* votes were cast. That seems like a dramatic drop-off in only 20 years.

Toledo's population in 1990 was 332,943.
Toledo's population in 2010 was 287,208.

Obviously, the declining population explains some or much of the decline in voter turnout, but relatively speaking, the vote count in 2013 seems significantly lower compared to 1993.

I don't know how a holiday changes the apathy.

 #toledo - #politics