bryan suddith dot com

For the last 5 years I have watched and participated in various levels of local politics. I love politics. I am more right of center, more moderate than far right, and am proud to say I voted for Clinton two times, and ashamed that I never had sense enough to vote for Bush (43).  I had the pleasure to work on campaigns at all levels from Congress to tiny ward seats of city councils. I also spent two years in the trenches working in elections here in Montgomery County.   Here is what I observed in yesterday’s Special Democratic Party Primary for Ohio’s 3rd Congressional District.

1) The voting system worked. There are many complaining that the super vote center system disenfranchised voters. There is no evidence to support that. Both my friend David Esrati and acquaintance Mike Bock make this claim without anything to support their call to arms.  Special elections, even those for Congressional seats covering parts of 4 counties, rarely attract spring primary numbers. Voters are not disenfranchised when all are given equal opportunities to vote. In this election, every voter, all 323,843 of them were invited to vote by mail here in Montgomery County’s portion of the 3rd Congressional district.

The masses were not expected to show up to the vote center. They were expected to vote by mail.  Voting by mail has been advocated by both Esrati and Bock ad nausea. At some point the blame for low turnout has to fall at the feet of an apathetic electorate. Its the job of the parties and candidates to turn out voters, whether at local polls, vote centers or at the mail box. Not the Boards of Elections. The BOE’s job is to facilitate a fair, impartial election serving every registered voter. Yesterday they did that in fine fashion. Kudos to the staff for completing this while many of their co-workers vacationed in the weeks leading up to this important election.

Warren County opened all its regular polling locations in their portion of the 3rd Congressional district and only a fraction of the registered Dems showed up. With all polls open as usual, only 192 Democrats showed up, compared with 1982 back in May. Location had nothing to do with turnout, candidates and timing did. Lets not blame vote centers in Montgomery County when we had a higher turnout than Warren County.

2) Mike and Dave claim a number of 2-3% turnout. This is fuzzy math. Only 30,238 people voted Democratic Ballots in the May 2010 primary in the 3rd Congressional District of Ohio. This is only 27% of the total amount of voters who voted in the March 2008 Democratic Primary. A loss of 73% in two years. Two factors at work here. The first is that picking candidates to lose to Turner isn’t nearly as exciting as picking the next President. The second factor is that the President isn’t polling well and that keeps deflated Democrats home in a summer special election.

The real turnout was about 23% of all “registered” Democrats voted in this special election. That is a more respectable number in my eye. For comparison sake I should mention that the GOP registered voters dropped from roughly 48,000 in March of 2008 to 41,280 in May of 2010. Again showing that elections less than Presidential have lower voter turnout. In total the voter rolls dropped by 10,000 voters between those years in the Montgomery Counties portion of the 3rd Congressional district.

3) Why did Esrati lose? Was it because his voters couldn’t find the polls. No. Should the Board of Elections put signs up at the closed locations. Yes. But did it cost him the election. No. Most campaign managers, consultants, advisers and the like preach that Name recognition is everything. I agree, but  with one caveat. Name ID is only good if the name ID is good. I would suggest to Esrati, Bock and those who are scratching their heads that David Esrati’s name ID has been tainted by repeat losses. Voters don’t vote for losers. Except in the case of Lincoln, no one has lost as many times as Esrati and been able to pull of a win in the end. This is called ballot fatigue. Voters are tired of seeing the Esrati name over and over. One should look to see how many votes he had in 2009 from the 3rd Congressional district portion of Montgomery County. That can explain a small portion of Dave’s drop off in 8 short months. Not too mention that a vote for Dave for City Commission is different than a vote to send a guy to Congress.

This doesn’t mean that David isn’t qualified, able or even the best candidate. This just says that voters see a perennial name and pass it up for something fresh. Most voters have forgotten Fogle’s name and I would guess didn’t associate his name with T.V. in the Dayton market. He too had a failed attempt at a State Rep seat in 2006.

For a full analysis of this race I would wait and see what media was used by the Roberts campaign. When Campaign Finance Filings are complete in the next few weeks we can look at what mail was used, phone or web and see how Roberts picked up half the votes.