What you glean from Tuesday’s election results depends on which side of the apple cart you are standing as someone pours lemonade into a half-empty/half-full glass. What they told me:
For some people being a patriot means getting worked up over people kneeling during the national anthem.
It means waving flags and supporting our troops and respecting America by waving flags and pledging unquestioning support to Uncle Sam, especially during the patriotic holidays. Being a patriot doesn’t mean participating in the most basic activity associated with representative democracy: voting.
In San Diego County there are more than 1.5 million registered voters, according to the Registrar of Voters Office. Of that figure, 406,501 people in the county voted.
In Chula Vista, 23,417 people voted in the mayoral race, and 23,881 voted in the Measure A contest (the tax increase question), the two elections were open to voters citywide. A 2017 U.S. Census estimate places the city’s population at slightly more than 270,000 residents. (In 2010 the official count was 243,916.)
About 70,000 people are under 18 years old, the legal age to vote. That leaves — again it’s a broad estimate — 200,000 adults who meet at least one requirement of voting.
Factor in the number of people who can’t vote because of immigration status or legal restrictions — for giggles let’s say half the adults in the city of Chula Vista are undocumented or felons on parole, and that still leaves you with about 100,000 potential voters. And only 23,000 chose to cast a ballot.
In National City, two term-limit measures were open to all eligible voters. In the Measure B contest 3,949 voted and in Measure C 3,928 people voted. That city’s estimated 2017 population is 61,363.
The registrar as of Thursday morning reported that there were still more than 220,000 ballots left to be counted but those are countywide. Anyone who thinks the majority of those uncounted votes originated from those two South County cities well … bless their hearts for their wishful thinking.
Chula Vista and National City are not alone in their apparent apathy. Obviously they are only two cities in a county that stretches from the international border in the south to otherworldly Orange County in the north.
And it’s not as if the low voter turnout — again — is not unexpected. Every voting season we have experts telling us that voter turnout is low in the June primaries, especially in the non-presidential election years.
But the anemic results seem especially foul this year when culturally we have an ongoing, ugly and heated argument over what it means to be a good, patriotic American.
Collectively we expect people not to take a knee during “The Star Spangled Banner” but so many of us can’t take the time to vote.
America is full of patriots.
I agree voter apathy is not a sign of patriotism. I do not agree with conflating that shameful behavior with respecting symbols our nation – the flag and anthem.