Another Election

Last week there was a special election for my metro district here in Nashville (or I guess it would be better identified as the district that I live in). Evidently, there are about 12000 registered voters in this district. Considering the demographic, I would guess that is a high percentage of the eligible voters. For this election, however, only about 10% of the voters actually voiced their opinion. (A little annoying, really, but so it goes...)

With such small elections, there is more opportunity for candidates to focus on campaigning for each available vote. I received no fewer than 8 calls in the week leading up to the election, the bulk of which were received in the 24 hours before the voting location closed. I had voted early, so it was little more than an annoyance to me, but again, so it goes. The little bit that wasn't annoyed was glad to have a voice that mattered.

So the total number of voters for that district election was 1229. Here is where this process really turns into an exercise of futility: no single voter received enough votes to actually win. Somewhere on the rule books, it states that the winner has to have received at least 50% of the votes. So now, a runoff special election has been scheduled for the end of April. I will be curious to see how many people turn out for that one. Since the person I voted for is now out of the running, I can't say I have much of an opinion about either of the remaining two candidates. I do, however, plan to vote anyway. I guess I will just have to dig deeper to find redeeming values in one or other of the candidates.

It's mainly just another month without council representation.