Or Burnout?

Our local county (Fairfax, VA) had a special election on Tuesday to replace the Board of Supervisors Chairman, after he moved up to Congress. I made sure I voted, but my husband didn’t. Just read in the paper that only 16 percent of eligible voters voted in the special election. 16 percent, of one of the wealthiest counties in the nation.

Now, I don’t know if this is a special election thing, or what, but it seems to me that the person in the driving seat of the county would warrant consideration and a vote.

There were four candidates – a Democrat, a Republican, a Green Party candidate, and an Independent. The Democrat won, by a margin of 1 percent (according to the news).

We’ll have the new Chairman of the Board of Supervisors until the end of 2011; there are plenty of local issues that will be impacted by this choice. I have no idea why more people didn’t show up and vote. Signs were all over the place. I don’t watch much live TV, and I flip thru the commercials of what I get to watch, so I don’t know if there were any ads on local stations.

So, were people just not interested in voting again? Or had they had enough and decided to sit this one out? Or was it something else?