Voter turnout.

Sometimes I wonder, who really cares about politics? I know fundamentally we care about issues, but do those feelings translate into action? It will be very interesting to see if this years election brings out more voters than normal. According to a Washington post article in January 2005 , the 2004 elections had just over a 60% voter turnout and Bush actually won over 50% of that vote. However when you factor in the 78 million voters who did not turn out, the percentage of voters for Bush was only 30%. 78 million people did not vote....and so I ask why not?

What about Utah? In the 2004 election Utah was actually one of the highest states with voter turnout, over 68% according to the Deseret News report. Now flash forward to the 2006 election and according to KSL we were the lowest. Not only that but our voter registrations dropped as well. In the 2007 special election again only about 37% voted. In Cache County only 36% voted in 2007, in 2006 31.95%, 2004 62%. These are all general election results. What about the primary elections. In the same year 2004, the primary election for cache county had a whopping 14% voter turnout. This was an election that if my memory serves me correctly we had a race for a State Legislature seat. We need to increase voter turnout. There is no reason why people should not be voting in these elections. Will Utah voters not come out because our Favorite adopted son was not put on the ticket? I hope we do come out and vote. I hope that we can help mobilize our efforts and get more of our youth excited about politics. I believe that both candidates want change and we want a government that works. So we need to get out the vote and make sure that we top 2004 results with over 70% voter turnout.