Last week in Española we did not experience voter apathy. We had voter abandonment.
A total of 664 ballots were cast out of 10,187 registered voters. That is 6.5%. Less than 100 votes for each candidate sent two incumbents back to the city council. Think about it. A person can get elected to the city council with just over 40 votes in one race and just over 80 in another.
This is pathetic.
It’s enough to summon the ghost of Susan B. Anthony, the heroic fighter for women’s rights, who was arrested for trying to vote for Ulysses S. Grant for president.
She might ask, “What in the hell is the matter with you folks? You can vote but choose not to go to the polls? Shame on you.”
The contested races drew slightly more voters. In District 4, newcomer Sam LeDoux defeated Joseph Salazar 149 to 118 and in District 3 Felicia Archuleta-Toya upset incumbent Manuel Martinez 193-72.
As Rio Grande Sun columnist and former mayor, Javier Sanchez, writes in today’s edition, we have a community awash in problems. We have massive homelessness, poverty, poor education, fentanyl rampantly being sold and used, and overall crime, yet no one shows up to vote.
Yet, he writes, virtually no one shows up to exercise their voting rights to have a voice in government and a seat at the table — even if that seat is held by someone a voter supports.
This shoddy turnout is inexplicable and despicable.
Women of old (and new) would look at this turnout and be aghast. It took more than 70 years for women to get the right to vote which occurred when the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was passed. Interestingly even, though the Amendment was passed by Congress in 1919, it took more than a year for it to ratified.
Same thing happened to Blacks. It took just under a year from the time the 15th Amendment was passed by Congress in 1869 for ratification in 1870.
Actually, Blacks were given the right to citizenship in 1868 but that did not give all of them voting rights depending on different state laws.
And even once given the right to vote, Blacks often encountered violence and even murders when trying to vote.
Particularly following the Civil War, voting intimidation and violence in the south was extreme.
Folks paid with their lives for a chance to vote.
But now, in an increasing indolent world, people are largely all talk and no action. They spout off on social media with opinions and criticisms of government and elected officials but do not show up to vote.
One can only imagine and, in that case, imagine the worst about voter turnout next November.
Complain and fight back with your vote. Otherwise you get what and who you don’t vote for.