Political Will or Won't?

The LOST referendum is still up in the air and both sides are claiming victory, but saying "no" to defeat. In Iowa City and Coralville, there are votes to recount--with paltry 7 and 8 vote margins between the 1 cent 4 year sales tax. The county reported that the turnout of registered voters was around 15% for Iowa City and just over 17% in Coralville. Regardless of how it all turns out, Iowa City and Coralville voters lost and non-voters won.

Non-voters did not take time out of their day to vote, I mean it took 3 or 4 minutes at the highly congested precinct 17 where I was one of three people voting at 7:45 in the morning. Non-voters won because they did not expend fuel in cars, on bikes, or on foot to make their voices heard on an issue that one group said would be a 17% hike in their sales taxes. Non-voters won because they can contentedly continue to grouse about how taxes are wasted without the nagging feeling that comes from actually making a actual statement of what you believe was the best choice.

But, do you know who really won big? Small town voters. All 655 "yes" voters cashed in on casting their vote. You see, they actually stand to be big winners from sharing the sales tax revenue from Iowa City. It was kind of like winning the lottery for their communities where people spend a lot of dough out of town.

But back to the lack of voting in the larger communities; was this simple laziness? No, its likely that the incredibly wearing Iowa Caucuses and equally taxing presidential campaign tuckered people out so badly that they couldn't work up the the juice to vote. Heck, there were barely yard signs on this issue--you'd have thought it was a school board election or something.

I understand that the county will likely recount this miserable excuse of "the will of the people" and once again the non-voters win. They can feel good about griping about the high cost of elections and how this is yet another waste of their money--and shoot, a recount in this case seems hardly worth it,unless you live in Tiffin, Solon, University Heights, Oxford, Swisher, etc.