From the Mind of Jason Zandri

As published in the Record Journal Sunday November 8, 2009

JASON ZANDRI

With the election over, I have been reflecting on the outcome. Some of the people that I supported for Town Council made it, others didn’t and the same was true for Board of Education. I didn’t support all of the suggested changes for the charter; having said that, none of the proposals made it through.

I am actually not deeply concerned with all of this, really, because I always look at it as “the people have spoken” and that is the entire point of any election. Those that have been elected to various offices are going to be the ones to carry the charge for the operation and execution of the business of running the town for the next two years.

I’ll praise them for the things they get right and I’ll challenge them when I think they may not be going forward in the best or most efficient manner for the betterment of Wallingford.

My biggest concern is with how few voters showed up.

I am sure not having an opponent to Mayor Dickinson was part of the cause, but Wallingford was not unique in low voter turnout.

Farmington had 36 percent of their registered voters turning out (6,013 out of 16,707 registered) and Guilford had 37.7 percent turning out (5,910 out of 15,660 registered).

Plenty of other towns came close to or eclipsed 50 percent turnout and for a local election – that is pretty good. Those towns were under 10,000 registered voters, reflecting a smaller population than Wallingford.

So what makes 64.4 percent of the registered voters stay home on local Election Day in larger towns like Wallingford?

It can’t be the amount of time it takes to vote; I was in an out of Dag in less than 10 minutes, and that included time I spent talking with someone and buying baked goods that a group was selling as a fundraiser. I spent more time at the drive-thru getting my breakfast this morning.

It can’t be the lack of available information regarding candidates or the issues; there were forums, website, blogs, newspaper articles – you name it – teeming with more available information than the average person could consume.

I guess only 35.6 percent of the registered voters feel that their vote matters locally.

I hate to say it, but they are wrong. The town council and the office of mayor control many things that directly affect your day-to-day life in the town we all call home.

From the school budgets to taxes collected, from services that are offered to ones not, to the ordinances that are passed and if/how they are enforced – ALL are the result of the work of those who get put into office.

The voices of 8,850 people have set the stage for the next two years for 44,859.

Obviously, many of the total number of residents of Wallingford are children that are unable to register to vote, but it completely blows my mind that 16,020 of the 24,870 that are eligible to vote let 8,850 speak for them.

I spoke with a resident this morning after I dropped my daughter off at the Recreation Department; they were complaining about a neighbor of theirs that was blowing leaves into the road rather than bagging them. This resident knew that Wallingford does not have a vacuum service for the leaves and that the leaves must be bagged. They said “someone should bring this up to someone that could do something about it – this happens every year.”

I responded, “you have the issue, why don’t you make the call to get something done?”

They replied, “I’d like to know why I need to – I would think our elected officials would be on top of something like this.”

I asked, “did you vote yesterday?”

They replied, “no.”

I said nothing, and walked away.

Tags: election, Voter, Wallingford

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 8th, 2009 at 9:01 AM and is filed under From Wallingford, WALLINGFORD - Local News, WALLINGFORD - Opinions, WALLINGFORD - Political Scene. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.