What if Hamilton County had an election and no one showed up to cast a ballot? The situation isn’t quite that dire yet, but initial reports on early voting turnout for the May 4 Hamilton County primary election give rise to the possibility that it could become the case in the future.
That, of course, is an exaggeration. Some of Hamilton County’s approximately 209,000 registered did cast ballots in the initial four days of early voting, but not many. Only 1,315 votes were recorded. That’s not many, particularly when more than half of the total were either absentee ballots or were cast by nursing home residents.
The situation, one election official acknowledged, is discouraging, but not unexpected. Primary elections typically attract fewer voters than general elections. A similar primary election in 2006, for example, attracted only 13 percent of eligible voters to the polls.
Still, there is hope that that the current pace of voting will pick up, and that early voting turnout and the number of voters who go to the polls next month will take a turn for the better. There are reasons to expect that might be the case. Since there are only a handful of contested races on the May 4 ballot, some people undoubtedly feel little pressure to make up their minds early in the election process. Hopefully, they’ll vet the candidates in the next couple of weeks and head to the polls.
There is, of course, still time for them to do so — either during the early voting period or on Election Day. For early birds, there are three convenient sites at which to vote early in the May 4 Hamilton County primary election.