MANY VOTERS PASS UP KEY CITY, SCHOOL ISSUES

Turnout for Tuesday's elections in Cape Girardeau County was miserably low, much lower than the light turnout predicted by election officials.

This lack of interest might be taken as a sad commentary of how more and more Americans seem to be losing touch with government and their right to make key decisions about how they are governed.

On the other hand, it isn't enough just to urge voters to go the polls simply for the sake of voting. Those disinterested voters who didn't bother to make the effort to find their precinct polling place were, mostly likely, the least informed about the candidates and issues. Is that who should be making important ballot-box decisions?

What's most disturbing of all is that critical issues such as the sales tax for street projects in Cape Girardeau and the school bond and tax issues in Jackson didn't even get full participation from everyone who went to the polls Tuesday.

Consider this:

There were 4,664 voters who cast ballots in Cape Girardeau this week. But only 3,750 of them voted on the sales tax for city streets. Do the math. There were 914 voters (nearly 20 percent of those who voted) who went to the polls but didn't vote on the sales-tax issue. The half-cent sales tax extension passed 2,011 to 1,739, a 272-vote margin. If only a third of the city voters who didn't punch Yes or No on the sale-tax issue had voted against it, it would have failed.

Some voters who voted in Cape Girardeau didn't vote on the sales-tax issue because they didn't see it. It was the very last page of the many pages of voting options for all the party primaries. At some precincts, election officials made a point of mentioning the city tax issue to voters as they went into the voting booth. In other precincts, no one said anything.

In the Jackson School District, there were 5,365 voters who cast ballots. Of those, 425 didn't vote on the school bond issue. If those voters had all voted in favor of the bond issue, it would have passed with approval of 59 percent of the voters. The bond issue required a four-sevenths majority, or 57.1 percent.

The accompanying tax vote in the Jackson District also failed to attract every voter who went to the polls. On that issue, 496 voters didn't punch their ballots. If all of those voters had been in favor of the school tax, it still would have failed by 29 votes.

What's the point of rehashing voters who only voted on some candidates but not those important tax and bond issues? Simply this: Even those voters who make it to the polls are either failing to participate in crucial decision making, or they are being misled or confused by the placement of tax issues at the very end of the ballot -- behind a bevy of candidate slates for the various political parties.

Perhaps clearer information needs to be part of both the campaign process and instructions given by election workers at the polls.