Monroe County’s Turnout Problem

One week ago, we rediscovered that Monroe County has a turnout problem. Monroe County voted…

…well, a vast minority of the residents voted. You see only about 90,000 residents are registered to vote and of these about 15% or 8,000 people voted.

In contested elections, the vast majority of winners won with less than 5% of registered voters support. ( The exceptions that exceeded this 5% threshold in contested elections were Cheryl Munson and Trent Deckard.)

Take a moment and digest the concept that less than 5% of the population supported the winners. Think of a time you were recently in a busy place like a grocery store. If you looked at 20 people, less than one of those 20 people voted. Everyone else or 19 of those 20 stayed home.

We have a turnout problem.

In just this past week, I’ve talked with various community groups about this concern. And we will continue to talk about ways to get more Hoosiers to the polls.

First, I’m grateful for the work done on vote centers. This will help. Read the HT coverage on Monroe County’s efforts to move toward vote centers.

Lastly, I will be spending this time until the general election hosting listening sessions with partners to arrive at community-based solutions to this problem, because we need all Monroe County residents involved in making decisions about our future.