CARLTON FLETCHER: Ward II voters need to ‘get woke’

Gotta blame it on something. Blame it on the rain that was falling …

— Milli Vanilli

In doing this job over the years, the initial irony of being an apolitical person covering political campaigns has gradually worn away and I find myself fascinated by the process.

Since it pretty much takes someone willing to sell their soul to a political party to make a run at the national level — and the state level’s not far behind — I find the local election process the most compelling. There are still people running for city and county posts who are independent-minded enough to make decisions based on practical reasons and principles, not to say that a lot of these folks don’t have agendas of their own.

In covering local elections, the one thing I’ve always tried to do is give every candidate as equal coverage as is possible. There have been people that I didn’t personally like, people I thought were bad for the community and people who generally had no business running for office that got the same amount of ink from this newspaper as on-the-ball politicians who actually went into their campaigns with a plan on how to make improvements in their community.

(A side note here — and, yes, it is a bit of a boast: Two weeks ago The Herald ran profiles on all five candidates running for the Ward II Albany City Commission seat in the Nov. 7 municipal election. Not that anyone would ever notice, but if anyone did check, all five of those stories had the exact same number of words (733), and photos that accompanied the stories were the same size. The logistics of that is, I promise, a lot harder than it sounds.)

I bring up the local election process because of some mildly disturbing news I got from Elections Supervisor Ginger Nickerson last week. Three days into early voting for the municipal election — a process that was originated to make voting more “convenient,” and one I personally feel is responsible for turning Election Day into much less of a big deal — only six people had cast ballots in the Ward II race. Of itself, that’s not a huge surprise. In general, Ward II voters are some of the least active in the city, only 377 of them (of 5,550 registered) voting in the district’s runoff four years ago.

Well, the first week of early voting came and went, and a quick update from Nickerson on Monday showed that only 12 people voted early over those first five days.

It’s easy enough to drum up excuses: There is only one contested race in the election, there are no state or national elections during this cycle, people have been through so much calamity during the year they’re too caught up in their own issues to worry about political campaigns, and, of course, there’s the one about people waiting a little longer to make up their minds on a candidate.

That latter excuse, at least on the surface, kinda makes sense. There are, after all, five candidates seeking the Ward II seat. And with three of the hopefuls having never held political office before, it makes sense that voters would want to know more about each candidate before making a decision.

But the bottom line is that there long has been, and apparently continues to be, a general disconnect between the voters in Ward II (who now number 6,353) and the people who represent them. When less than 8 percent of the registered voters in a district determine who holds office, you have to wonder about that old “will of the people” thing.

So, voters of Ward II, it’s time you got woke (that’s for Jordan) and did your civic duty. You’ve got five able candidates who’ve taken time out of their lives to offer themselves as your representative. You owe it to them — and to yourselves — to find out just where they stand on issues that impact our city, and then vote for the one you think will best address those issues.

Sadly, it’s usually the ones who don’t vote who end up doing the most complaining once the election’s over.

Email Carlton Fletcher at [email protected]. Follow @ABH_Fletcher on Twitter.

Staff Photo