A few more boring political comments before we get back to the fun stuff like UFOs and deer hunts:
1. I wanted to write about the voter turnout, but Andy Downs of the Election Board just told me they don't have the official numbers yet. So I did my own rough calculation, by adding up the votes in both sheriff's races and dividing by the number of registered voters as of February (per the Secretary of State's office). I came up with about 15 percent. If my number is reasonably accurate, that's pathetic. It's not a historic low -- we hit 12 percent in the city election primary three years ago, and I think we bottomed out at about 14 percent in a countywide primary. (And the lowest of all in the state may be the Indianapolis -- er, Marion County -- municipal primary three years ago, at 9 percent.) Motor Voter can explain some of it -- we were still in the low 20-something percent range for primary turnouts before thousands of people not interested in voting were added to the rolls. Still . . . There were some hotly contested races this year, which should have brought more of the party faithful out, had they been interested. Not a good sign.
Downs did say one race seemed to bring out the voters. About 2,500 people voted in the 80th District state representative Democratic primary, which is about 500 more than either candidate expected, given the turnout in previous 80th contests. Just shows what can happen when you have two evenly matched candidates who both campaign hard.
2. In tonight's editorial, I cautioned that the results of the primary should not be seen as too much of an endorsement for consolidated government. If I may quote myself:
There will be a tendency to see the election at the county level as a reaffirmation of the consolidated-government movement. There is some truth to that, but we need to be careful not to overstate its importance. True, Commissioner Marla Irving, seen as an impediment to consolidation by some, was beaten by Bill Brown. And County Councilman Cal Miller, one of those strong restructuring proponents from four years ago, easily beat back Fred Warner, who campaigned on the theme of “let's get the council back to normalcy and stop trying to do so much.”
But Brown has never advocated a change in government structure as drastic as consolidation
