Blogcast w/Chris Graham: When should Waynesboro vote?

Just short of 2,000 voters participated in the May city elections in Waynesboro. There are more than 13,000 people registered to vote in the city.

Two out of 13 is 15 percent. That’s how we allow ourselves to determine our city leaders.

But, hey, you could argue. We did better in 2016, which, we did. Right at 2,300 people voted that May.

Just over 2,800 voted in 2012, and way back in 2008, when a younger, dumber version of me ran for one of the seats, would you believe, 3,200?

Even that high-water mark was about 25 percent of the city.

Compare that to the presidential election in November 2008: 8,800 or so votes, just under 68 percent.

In 2012, 8,700, again, just under 68 percent.

2016: 9,000, give or take, almost 70 percent.

The matter of how many people vote isn’t to me about who wins or loses. In the presidential years, the November electorate is still Republican: John McCain, Mitt Romney and, damn, Donald Trump each won the city.

it’s about getting more people involved, to me.

Mayor Terry Short is leading a discussion on the when we vote issue on Monday, Oct. 29, beginning at 6 p.m., in the cafeteria at Kate Collins Middle School.

We can presume that the usual three or four people will show up, because who cares about local government, right?

You should.

The people responsible for making sure the water turns on, the trash gets picked up, that there are adequate police, fire and rescue resources, those folks have more to do with how your daily lives play out than Donald Trump and his itchy Twitter fingers.

As you can guess from the way I’m writing this, I’m all for moving the city elections from May, when nobody votes, to November, when everybody votes.

And, yes, I get it, local issues run the risk of getting caught up in the national cycle.

I’ll take that tradeoff to get more people involved, against the current approach, with the one in six of us who even knows there’s an election that particular Tuesday getting an awful lot of sway.

But I’ve only been pushing for this change for 20 years, so it’s not that big a deal to me or anything.

Eye roll.

Column by Chris Graham