In response to The Columbian’s editorial on Nov. 28 about voter turnout: Off-year elections have had reduced participation rates for years. No surprise here. But really, should the folks who want to vote in these elections be disenfranchised? No way! These folks obviously care about our county — enough to vote and run for office! This year Clark County’s participation was the lowest in Washington at around 27 percent.
However, one of the biggest travesties of this situation is all the ballots that are mailed at taxpayer expense to folks who don’t vote! Out of the approximately 366,000 who are eligible to vote, only 332,000 are active and about 50,000 voters who are registered have never bothered to vote! When only 93,000 bother to vote, the county has just blown $148,000 sending ballots to folks who did not vote — and this is just an estimate on the postage alone, not including the cost of materials and labor. This is outrageous and this loss would never happen if we still voted in person.
My suggestion as a compromise to this is to have voters apply for their ballot in off-year elections. Then we’d find out who really cares to vote and not waste our taxpayer money on those who don’t.
