VOTERS DEMONSTRATE ABILITY TO BE HEARD ON THE KEY ISSUES

In an era when voter apathy is too often taken for granted, the voters who went to the polls Tuesday in Southeast Missouri and across the state showed they still are capable of making sound decisions on taxes and other issues. Look at some of the ballot results:

-- Despite growing resistance to higher taxes, voters approved a $26.5 million bond issue and an accompanying quarter-cent sales tax for major water improvements in Cape Girardeau. This was a big decision for voters, many of whom had their key questions about the project answered during one of several fact-filled presentations.

-- But voters in Morley, a small Scott County town, and Sedgewickville, a small community in Bollinger County, turned down tax increases. The Morley sales tax would have been used for the fire and police departments and is likely to be resubmitted to voters. The Sedgewickville issue was an increase in the fire district tax.

-- Statewide, voters approved a 10-year extension of the tenth-cent sales tax for state parks and soil-conservation programs. The benefits of this tax apparently were obvious to voters who have seen vast improvements in the state park system in recent years and a successful effort to reduce soil erosion.

-- Another statewide issue that was soundly defeated was Proposition A, which would have raised Missouri's minimum wage to the highest in the nation -- a full third higher than the federal minimum wage, which just went up. Clearly, voters were intelligent enough to figure out that such high wages mandated on employers would have dire consequences. Indeed, some voters may have taken more notice of this minimum-wage issue because of court battles regarding ballot language. In the end, the ballots didn't disclose the anticipated cost of over $100 million a year to state government. But widespread publicity about the legal wrangling to remove the legislatively imposed fiscal note got the message across anyway.

There is still much to be said about voter turnout, however. In some cases, more voters stayed away from the polls on Election Day than cast ballots. This election was yet another indication that efforts to increase voter participation such as the Motor Voter Law don't work. In fact, the costly, federally mandated push to register voters every time they deal with government agencies -- as provided by the Motor Voter Law -- may be counterproductive. Not only does it foster fraudulent multiple registrations, it apparently doesn't do much of anything to get new registrants to the polls.

While it is easy to bemoan low voter participation, it must be remembered that in today's world of negative political advertising and growing array of issues and candidates, many voters prefer to exercise their freedom not to vote rather than cast uninformed ballots. Voters who make the effort to vote on Election Day, however, generally are those who have taken the time to learn about at least some of the key choices and are inclined to make better decisions.

This certainly appears to be the case in the examples cited above. When it comes time to make choices, voters still have voices.