Tag: low turnout

Posted on

Rutgers-Eagleton Poll Reports little awareness of NJ Novemeber 3rd Vote

VOTE_theridgewoodblog

Who? What? Huh?? New Jerseyans Unaware of Next Week’s Election, Eagleton Says

Forty-four years after the first press release from the Eagleton Institute of Politics’ inaugural poll reported little awareness of the then upcoming 1971 state legislative elections, New Jerseyans today remain uninformed about the Legislature, according to the latest Rutgers-Eagleton Poll. Three-quarters of Garden State residents are completely unaware that any elections will be held next week, just slightly better than the 85 percent who were ignorant in 1971, in what was then called the New Jersey Poll. Politicker Staff, PolitickerNJ Read more

Posted on

When you hold an election and nobody comes, what does that tell you about you?

VOTE_theridgewoodblog

Face it, Jersey pols, the people ain’t buyin’ what you’re sellin’.

Posted by Scott St Clair On June 05, 2015 1 Comment

By Scott St. Clair | The Save Jersey Blog

The 2015 New Jersey primary election came and went without me. That’s right: I didn’t vote, so sue me.

I live in the 29th Legislative District, which hasn’t supported anyone to the right of Henry Wallace or George McGovern since the Johnson administration – the ANDREW Johnson administration – so why bother? Additionally, there were no contested races – both the Republican and Democratic legislative nomination ballots featured candidates put up by the official party organizations and nobody else.

Since the last thing in the world I want to do is to further political party stranglehold control over the nominating process in New Jersey, I elected to pass. As P.J. O’Rourke entitled one of his books, “Don’t Vote It Only Encourages the Bastards.”

So then I get the lecture, this time from Max Pizarro at Thursday’s PolitickerNJ.com:

All right, don’t complain. You don’t like it? Fine. You think this state is a disaster area? Okay. But don’t complain. Just do not dare complain. Road rage? Suck it up. Violent crime? Suck it up. High property taxes? Suck it up.

Too much blood bled with the expectation – or at least the post-game public explanation – of that American-protected right to vote.

Last night, we didn’t earn the right to complain, as rain-bullied and civics-bothered “voters” allowed machine and independent expenditure PAC politics to blanket New Jersey in the absence of people power.

With all due respect, which means just the opposite whenever you hear it, put a sock in it, Max, because not voting is sometimes as much an expression of political will as voting. When you hold an election and nobody comes, what does that tell you about those who hold it?

I’m pretty sure my son did not do six deployments in Afghanistan, Iraq and Kuwait, or my great-grandfather crouch behind a low, stone wall on Little Round Top some 152 years ago shy one month to protect entrenched political parties and bosses and fertilize a political system that ignores the people, prevents over half of them from participating and is a joke.

And all those problems you mentioned, Max? When the people who created them are the same people who control access to and are pretty much exclusively on the ballot, what exactly is the point of it all?

In looking around at various counties throughout the state, most of the turnout figures I saw were single-digit in nature, which tells me more about the product than it does the consumer.  Face it, Jersey pols, the people ain’t buyin’ what you’re sellin’.

https://savejersey.com/2015/06/when-you-hold-an-election-and-nobody-comes-what-does-that-tell-you-about-you/