Lawmaker Performance vs. Voter Apathy

We ran a poll recently on wspa.com concerning your view on how our state lawmakers performed during the just completed General Assembly. The last time I looked at the figures from that nonscientific survey it was around 90% unfavorable for those men and women and the work they do in Columbia.

By: Fred Cunningham | News Channel 7
Published: June 11, 2008 | 0 Comments | Post a Comment

We ran a poll recently on wspa.com concerning your view on how our state lawmakers performed during the just completed General Assembly. The last time I looked at the figures from that nonscientific survey it was around 90% unfavorable for those men and women and the work they do in Columbia.

Now, when many of you had a chance to vote for the people who you either support or want to toss out of office, here are the real scientific numbers provided by the South Carolina Election Commission on voter turnout in Upstate counties:

Abbeville 29.71 %
Anderson 26.20 %
Cherokee 6.14 %
Greenville 17.33 %
Greenwood 19.76 %
Laurens 21.06 %
Newberry 16.71 %
Oconee 23.72 %
Spartanburg 20.46 %
Union 39.24 %

No results were provided for Pickens County.

Think about this the next time you want to put into perspective how many people will decide who our leaders are when it comes time to go to the polls. Conway Belangia of the Greenville County Election Commission described it to me this way:

Imagine a packed Death Valley at Clemson with 80,000 fans all standing on their feet.

Now imagine one third of them sitting down. That represents the number of people who aren't registered to vote.

Imagine another third sitting down. That represents the number of people in South Carolina who are registered to vote, but don't.

The remaining third on their feet will decide the elections.

I voted on Tuesday. It took me about two minutes at 4:45pm because only 163 people had gone to my voting place after being open for close to ten hours.

You get another chance in November. Please, please take it.