Apparently these are the official voter turnout numbers for the August 10, 2010 primary as being reported on Courant.com, where you can search by town for the results.
TOWN Hartford
Eligible Democrats 33829
Democrats Voted 7484
Democrat Turnout 22.12%
Eligible Republicans 1719
Republicans Voted 404
Republican Turnout 23.50%
Pretty dismal numbers, but the number of eligible Republicans surprises me. It looks like the Republican vote is shrinking more and more each year. A few more years and they should be non-existent.
How is the budget for the Republican Registrar of Voters justified with such small numbers compared to the Democratic numbers?
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12 comments:
Kevin...there are several reasons for the low turnout...I will give you 2 right away..
1. The HDTC did nothing to effect turnout...the Chair has not inspired the party or any registered democrats.There was no harford headquarters...there was no fundraising since she took office in March....there was no brochures of media...there was no organized GOTV effort..the Hartford Party was MIA in regards to the election.
2. Registered voters understand that the political system in Hartford is rife with criminals,the corrupt and their enablers.Few want to vote locally now and it has a spill over effect in all other races.
The only way left to us to eliminate the criminals and the corrupt within the political system is to expose them to the media and let the authorities get rid of them, where appropriate,one by one.
As a registered unaffiliated voter in Hartford I am willing to spend the money for a Republican registrar. I would not trust an office with a sole registrar essentially appointed by the DTC. The Working Family Party probably will not be around forever
And how many unaffiliated registered voters are there in Hartford?
One suggestion would be for the State Legislation to change the statute so that the top two vote getters get in and not have the Republicans get an automatic spot.
Frank,
I'm not saying we only need 1 Registrar, but should we be spending the same amount to manage 34,000 voters as we are for 1,700. State law requires registrars, but no where does it require full time positions and full time deputy registrars. It is something to be looked at when we consider how we are spending our money
If there is an opening for register..the new register should be in keeping with most of the rest of the elected officials and political operatives...that is to say, A CROOK or CORRUPT
Rest assured the HDTC would probably enodrse someone with terrible baggage anyway.
I have a different take. D turnout statewide was 24.76% and R turnout statewide was 29.48%.
That means citywide turnout for D's was about 90% of the statewide average and for R's it was just north of 70% of the statewide average.
On the R side, you have to be disappointed about that.
On the D side, however, I think the Hartford D's have to be satsified, or at at least no more disappointed than D's statewide.
Hartford D's also have to be happy about their better performance this time around. In the 2006 D for the primary, Hartford D's turned out at under 25% (just under 8,100 votes for about 33,000 registered D's). The stateiwde turnout for that race was just north of 38%.
This means that Hartford's D's actually did a much better job this time around in getting their vote out.
In short, at least this time around, you can't blame low primary turnout on Hartford specific issues. I think it is a much broader and systemic trend.
Mr Wareing....the only reason you are crowing about this low D turnout is that you are tied into the reigning hierarchy running the HDTC( criminals,corrupt and enablers of same)...otherwise you would be railing about the turnout
The fact of the matter is there was no HDTC effort at all in Hartford and certainly no GOTV effort nor an office...nor fundraising....so dont twist the numbers and say Hartford and the HDTC is doing well when you have a non-existent Chair and officers of the party that are criminals,corrupt and under investigation.
Rich...what i think the previous poster was saying,somewhat inarticulately is, since the hartford party didnt do a thing as a group then they shouldnt get your credit for what citizens did individually.
I also think the money dumped into the primary by statewide candidates and the obnoxious robo calls got some people out to vote. Regardless, can anyone say that the Town Committees, D or R, are doing anything to encourage voter participation or education? When was the last time you saw the D or R Registrar of Voters out encouraging people to register to vote or get out to vote? Not a bad salary for the little work we get out of them.
And what happened to the Public Access program and its short lived run by the last DTC chair. The opportunities are available to both parties, but they prefer keeping the electorate in the dark. An educated and motivated voter might just show up at the polls, vote, and force some changes and we know we can't allow that if we want corruption to thrive
My point was not that the Hartford DTC did a wonderful job, just that it didn't do much worse than the DTC's elsewhere and that the lack of effort and result is systemic, and not Hartford specific. I also have to disagree with Bruce a little bit. There may not have been an organized DTC effort but there were a lot of town commitee people doing work in some of the districts (1st, 4th, 6th and 7th) because they had primaries or just because they had candidates or statewide office (the 3rd and 5th) they were backing. Was it everyone? No. But you can't really say that none of the 66 DTC members were active because I know at least 20-25 who were very active. Again, not a great %, but how is that different than most other DTC's statewide? I stand by what I said in a prior post - DTC's just don't matter as much as they used to and they don't have the power they once had.
Hello Kevin,
Capitol City View is on Sundays at 8:00pm.
The show took a short sabatical, and has resumed shows these past two weeks,
My Guests are Senator John Fonfara, State Rep. Kelvin Roldan,
Acting City Council President rJo Winch, Hartford Democratic Registrar Olga Vazquez, Hartford 2000 Staff Consultant Linda Bayer.
I am scheduling Mayor Segarra, and an invite will be going out to all City Council people for the fall schedule. I am also inviting all the candidates for State wide offices.
As you know we were in quite a primary season,
So needless to say I was very busy.
I would like it if you would consider coming on!!
Rich...good point...I do agree with you that there was decent individual and district activity.Since there wasnt an organized HDTC organizational effort,the districts were on there own.
There are several reasons why the DTC's and in particular Hartford's are no longer very powerful, which I will save for a later time, except to say that the laws have changed and said changes have chipped away some power from the DTC's...ie...the DTC's once selected the now defunct "sherrifs" and Hartford had alot of them...and in order to get re-appointed those sherrifs towed the line of their respective DTC's or were not re-appointed.
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