Is it really an election when voter turnout is predictably awful?

What time is it?

What else could it be in the aftermath of another event that passes for a spring municipal off-year election in Illinois? It’s time for the traditional biennial rant about the foolish, anti-democratic practice of scheduling elections when everyone has to know few people will cast ballots.

Voting numbers show that of Will County’s 454,714 registered voters, just 71,140 cast ballots. That’s roughly 16%.

In La Salle County, 21% of registered voters cast a ballot, and in DeKalb County it was 10%.

In Chicago, where the city was hosting one of its most important elections in its long, checkered history, turnout was estimated to be 35%. Election officials say it may go as high as 38% after all the mail-in ballots are cast.

What is this state doing? And why?

The answer to the first question is clear – it’s presiding over a sham election process that results in very few people electing very many people to both important and unimportant local offices.

Why? That’s harder to divine. Perhaps the answer is the best of all possible reasons — it’s always been done this way. Perhaps, it’s because the powers that be prefer low-turnout elections that allow relative handfuls of people to elect municipal insiders to offices who have taxpayer resources to spread around.

After all, to the victor go the spoils, especially in Illinois.

This would be intolerable under any circumstance. But it’s especially grating in a political atmosphere where our elected officials are constantly braying about how important it is that people vote, accusations of voter-suppression are routinely made and all manner of legislative efforts – some good, some highly suspect – are made to make it even easier to register and vote.

Talk about voter suppression – does 20% of even much less turnout fall under that category?

The responsibility for this reality lies with individual voters, too many of whom can’t be bothered to participate.

Why?

Are they alienated from the system? Are they so content with local governance they aren’t worried about who wins? Are their lives so busy they can’t keep up with local races that are relatively easy to follow?

All three explanations – and probably a few more – apply.

This is a problem, but it’s one easily solved. If elections are scheduled when few will vote, why not reschedule them to a time when people will vote in far larger numbers.

That would be the off-year and general elections, when Illinois voters elect their governors, members of Congress and state legislators.

It would make for a longer ballot, but not much longer. It also would produce local results that would reflect broader public sentiment than now.

The political reality, unfortunately, is that too many legislators either don’t have the inclination or the nerve to take on an election issue like this.

Self-interested defenders of the failed status quo have too much invested in keeping the system the way it is now.

It hardly serves the broad public interest. But in a state like Illinois, that is not exactly a high priority.

Champaign News-Gazette

Editor’s note: This editorial was updated with some voting statistics from northern Illinois.