More than 92 percent of registered voters in the city of Athens stayed away from the polls last Tuesday, according to unofficial election results from Athens County Board of Elections.
Throughout the county, including voters inside the city, about 17 percent of registered voters cast a ballot during the general election last week, according to the data; take votes from inside the city out of the equation entirely and that number rises to about 22 percent cast their ballots.
“I don’t know why people don’t vote,” said Penny Brooks, deputy director of Athens County Board of Elections. “I’m surprised people don’t want to get more interested in elections. You just never know how they’re going to turn out.”
Brooks had one theory: Students and residents who registered to vote in the 2012 presidential election might not have showed up this time around.
At one of the polling locations in Baker University Center, only three of 977 registered voters cast ballots, according to election data. In contrast, about 48.7 percent of voters registered to vote in Jacksonville Village cast their ballots.
“It just shows that there are a lot of people out there who aren’t interested in local elections,” said Pete Couladis, chairman of the Athens County Republican Party.
Though Couladis believes both students and permanent residents are to blame for low turnout numbers, he said students are typically less likely to vote in general elections.
“Students generally have very little interest in local elections, and that’s been historical unless there’s some hot issue on the ballot,” he said.
OU College Democrats President Caitlin Roberts said she wished more people would have turned out, and that lack of knowledge about Election Day should hardly be a reason for the low turnout.
“Literally everyone (in OU College Democrats) registered to vote was contacted, so everyone should have known it was Election Day,” Roberts said. “I think we’d definitely like to see more people than that.”
Brooks said a “high” voter turnout in the county would probably be around 33 percent or more.
As far as political party goes, no Republican candidate ran for any office in the city of Athens, a fact Couladis said underscores an even further shift toward the left in the city’s demographic.
“Among students you don’t see a lot of Republican numbers, as far as registration is concerned,” Couladis said.
But OU College Democrats also placed less focus on local races this year, instead putting the bulk of its resources behind pivotal races such as former Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe’s race for governor of Virginia.
“I mean, we definitely go out and support the (local) candidates,” Roberts said. “(We) did a lot with Virginia because they had more competitive statewide election.”
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