Atlanta's new mayor will be...waiting another month to be chosen

[thatcrazycajun]

The City Too Busy to Hate is apparently too busy to vote as well. Thanks to a stunning level of voter apathy, turnout for the elections held here in Atlanta this Tuesday past was, even by the standards of an off-year election with no federal offices contested, positively dismal, according to the local paper's next-morning report. Only 24 percent of registered voters residing in the city showed up at the polls, helping to force the eight-way mayoral race (or six-way, depending on who's reporting) into a runoff Dec. 1. That's right; over three-quarters of this city's electorate couldn't even be bothered to take a few goddamned minutes out of their days to perform a civic duty only asked of them once a year. And that doesn't even mention all the adult citizens eligible to vote who couldn't even be bothered to register in time; once again, our future is decided by a minority of a minority!

This despite the fact that this majority-black, majority-Democrat city could well elect its first Caucasian mayor in over three decades—and its first Republican in over 1.25 centuries!—in this election. Front-runner Mary Norwood, currently a city council member, is seeking a promotion to the top job. She faces off against state senator Kasim Reed, a black Democrat, in the runoff after neither of them could muster the 50 percent plus one votes required to win outright. Several other African-American candidates, including current council president Lisa Borders, divided their community's vote while Norwood made some inroads with them as well as dominating the white vote. Two-term incumbent Shirley Franklin, the city's first woman mayor, must step down due to the city charter's term limits come January.

This means that for the second year running, Atlantans will be asked to return to the polls a second time within a week of the December holiday season's opening. Turnout for that day is liable to be even worse, given most people's hectic schedules that time of year; the same problem last December cost us a chance to oust GOP U.S. Senator Saxby "Shameless" Chambliss. And it also means a full four weeks more of the mayoral campaigns making "robo-calls" to my home at all hours of the day, running TV and radio ads exhorting voters to pick their candidate (and likely slamming the opponent) and junk mail from them and assorted other groups in my mailbox. The sole consolation I have is that all my fellow Atlantans who shirked their civic duty two days ago will share the same fate.

Comments

[sffilk.livejournal.com]

Would you believe that I went to vote Tuesday, only to be told that I was ineligible to vote because although my address says "Atlanta," I live in DeKalb County? Well, that's what happened.