At $25 per vote, what a waste of $7 million in Missouri

Would you be upset if you threw a $7 million party and almost everyone gave it a miss?

That is the kind of embarrassment that Missouri lawmakers should be feeling today given the paltry turnout (less than 8 percent of the state's registered voters) at the recent presidential primary election.

Not that our lawmakers deserve any sympathy on this score. In going ahead with a "nonbinding" election that was empty of any purpose, Missouri lawmakers on both sides of the aisle knowingly and shamelessly put your money to waste -- treating a $7 million cost to taxpayers as a mere trifle.

What, after all, is $7 million?

A trivia buff could tell you that the entire federal budget amounted to just more than $7 million in 1794.

But there are other more relevant ways of thinking about the importance of $7 million:

* If you were acting in the capacity of Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon or a member of the state Senate, you could see it as a small but not insignificant down payment in trying to eliminate the yawning $500 million shortfall in the fiscal 2012 budget.

* You could tell yourself that this would be enough money (if left in the private sector) to allow every parent in Missouri to treat their children to lunch at a McDonald's or Steak 'n Shake.

* You could act as though this was real money taken from hardworking people -- amounting to more than 150 times the median family income in the state of Missouri.

But this was not the thinking of our elected officials. As Missouri Sen. Kevin Engler (R-District 3) told the Show-Me Institute: "People are furious and you can't blame them. In the 10 years I've been here, this is the dumbest thing I've seen the legislature do. We spent $7 million -- or just about $25 a vote -- in an election in which not even one out every 12 people voted. This is an election that did absolutely nothing, while we as a state are firing hundreds of people in trying to cut a half a billion dollar budget deficit."

Last year, the Republican-controlled legislature approved a measure to reset the primary to a later date in order to avoid violating national party rules that would have punished states for trying to hold a primary election before March 6. On unrelated grounds, Gov. Nixon vetoed the larger legislation that contained the new primary date. Another effort to reset the primary date failed in the special session last fall.

However, even after the state Republican Party decided to hold a March 17 caucus to determine the state's delegates to the national convention, some Republicans in the Senate continued to trumpet the people's "right to vote" in the de-husked primary, even though the practical effect of the vote would be slim to zero.

Sen. Engler described the money and effort wasted on the primary as "a bipartisan failure" which could have been avoided if elected officials of both parties had been less cavalier about wasting taxpayers' money. He noted that all eight of the Democrats in the Missouri Senate joined Republicans in voting to keep the primary election in February.

I did vote Feb. 7 -- but only out of curiosity. I went to my polling place in St. Louis' Central West End at 5 p.m. Only eight other people were there -- all of them poll workers. I was the only voter.

This much is certain: An overwhelming majority of Missourians voted with their feet in paying no heed to a meaningless election. And if there is any further lesson to be drawn, it may be this: If the Political Class is so careless in spending millions of dollars of your money, can you trust them in spending billions, or even trillions?

Andrew B. Wilson is a resident fellow and senior writer at the Show-Me Institute, which promotes market solutions for Missouri public policy.