During the run up to the recent City Council election I was mortified to find out that the City had elected to have polling stations located in the most outrageous places. Most, not even close to the districts there were to serve. My own location was located by Home Depot in Canyon County where as I live in Circle J. area which is literally miles away.

My biggest location issue was the Mercedes Benz dealership of Valencia. Yes, if you didn’t know it, that was a polling location. What in the world were the city officials thinking? Imagine having to go to a car dealership to vote? I have asked for and still not received polling data per location so I cant attest to the voter turn out there, but lets assume it was pretty low. My e-mails to the City clerk after the election asking “why” the polling locations favored people staying at home instead of voting have gone un-answered.

I knew there was a slight problem when my mail carrier came a knock’n at my door the day after the election. He was perplexed. He had gone to his usual polling locale and the folks told him that the city never contacted them for this election at all and that they had no idea where their polling location was. Then came the June primaries and low and behold, there they are with the garage open and people voting.

I am not real happy with the way the City chose its polling locations, but they did their best. Next time I am sure they will do better. Was it rigged? No way, they just made a few dumb decisions. Would better, closer to the district polling locations have increased or helped increase voter turn out? Yes, I do believe that. Say 5% more to be safe. Which would have had NO impact on the results.

Is it the City, County or States responsibility to make people vote? Nope. It is there responsibility to make it possible for them to vote in a fair and prudent manner.

I bring all this up because I am shocked still at the voter turn out for the West Ranch town Council. 54 people voted! 54 people voted. The local papers Op Ed writers blame location for weak turn out. Recently an Out of State writer for the Mighty Signal claimed it was a signal to the Town Council that they just didn’t care about them and want them to go away.

Ok, I am not normally like this, because I like my local papers and read them everyday, but lets get serious. This is total Bull! To say that people didn’t vote to send a signal to the town council that they didn’t care about them is just freaking nutty! You have to be a political neophyte to even think that way. What a down-right silly comment. Why didn’t he say the same thing when 14% voted in the last city council election? Instead it was all about people liking it the way it was and the status quo because everything is alright. Wow! Here is your alright folks, Where the hell is frank Ferry? Marsha? Bob Keller and Cameron? The only person doing anything is Mayor Weste, whom I now have a lot of respect for and admire.

Lets look at the other “problem” people have with the West Ranch election. Location. 4th of July fireworks in the park and vote. seems pretty simple and easy to me. People in this country have been screaming for YEARS that we need to hold elections on weekends or holidays because more people would vote. Well, there goes that myth. What if they had it at all the club houses in West Ranch? well, ok we increase it by 5%…..I think I made my point.

The problem is not location or people sending a signal that they hate the town councils or city councils, the problem is voter apathy. People don’t care. Yes 100 million of us cared to vote for a President in the last election but what about the rest of the eligible voters in this county? Didn’t they know where the location was? Didn’t they know that there was an election coming up? Didn’t they know who the candidates where? The answer is simple, they didn’t give a rip. Period. I know people like this. We all know people like this. They just don’t seem to care. Cant vote, got cook dinner or whatever. 87,000 eligible voters in SCV and only 14,000 vote for 3 open City Council seats. What a joke. That means that there are 73,000 people here in this City whom have NO say in the political debate at all as far as I am concerned. You don’t vote, your opinion means nothing. Just like if you lived in Virginia. You don’t vote here but you have the audacity to tell US how to vote. How sad. People in Virginia are probably thrilled that their local political writer is not espousing his version of political discourse locally and instead way over there in La La land. Politico’s in Virginia would eat him for lunch.

They had better voter turn out in Iraq and there they risked their lives to vote. Please don’t blame the candidates for low voter turn out, if you do you lose all credibility with people who have IQ’s over your 50. Just go back to cartoon network and your cheese wiz smoothy and leave the rest of us alone. You scare us.

I ran in the election this year in SCV. I came in last. I am proud that I tried to make a difference and bring fresh ideas to the debate. I put my name and reputation on the line and was fully vetted by the city and county. People came after me and I was proud to take them on and debate the facts. Facts are what matters. You cannot debate someone who has the facts wrong to begin with. Virginia is wrong and owes an real apology to the people of West Ranch and the Town Council.

Jack Murphy