Sunday, May 09, 1999
Precious few cared about major vote
Big city changes coming anyway
BY HOWARD WILKINSON
The Cincinnati Enquirer
The next sunny spring day, as you take your lunch on Fountain Square, try a little experiment in democracy.
Count off the first 20 adults you see walking by and imagine that they are the voting-age population of Cincinnati.
The first eight of them, or thereabouts, will not be registered to vote. They are walking through Fountain Square with lunch bags on a weekday afternoon, so you have to assume they are gainfully employed.
Which means, of course, that Uncle Sam and his junior partners in state and local government take a good-sized bite out of their paychecks every week, but they don't seem to be able to work up the energy to either register or vote for or against the elected public servants who have volunteered to spend their money for them.
Curious, but true.
Take a gander at the next 12 who come along.
Ten of them are registered voters — fully qualified elec tors in the city of Cincinnati — who didn't manage to get to the polls for last Tuesday's primary election.
Two of them, plus the arms and legs of another, did show up at their polling places. And what they did when they got there was fairly amazing.
They totally rewrote the city's form of government, on behalf of themselves and the no-shows.
Issue 4 — the charter amendment setting up direct election of the mayor, with considerably more power attached to the job — passed with 53 percent of the vote, which was remarkable given that hardly anyone on either side of the debate had a clear
picture of which way the ballot issue would go.
It was passed by slightly more than half of the 18 percent of Cincinnati's registered voters who actually voted.
A week or so before the election, Cincinnati City Council spent $47,000 of the lunch crowd's money to mail copies of Issue 4 ballot language to 215,430 registered voters in the city. Most of those mailings, though, must have ended up in the city's solid-waste disposal system, since only 39,117 of those voters cast ballots.
The people who backed Issue 4 are convinced that the new system will launch a golden age in Cincinnati politics, an age of leadership and political accountability under a mayor who has the power to get things done.
Maybe so. To believe that, you have to believe that form trumps substance — that the structure of a government matters more than the people you fill it with. We'll see.
But whoever is elected mayor two years from now is going to have a fairly big stick to use on city council. The mayor, who will not be a voting member of council, will be able to appoint council committee chairs, veto legislation and take the lead in hiring and firing the city manager.
That's a fair amount of power, considering that Cincinnati has had generally toothless mayors for the 70-odd years it has had a council-manager form of government. Cincinnati mayors bang the gavel at council meetings, play the genial host at civic events and issue proclamations by the truckload.
But those 21/2 people you'll see on Fountain Square at lunch hour changed all that.
Tuesday night at the board of elections, some were gasping in astonishment that only 18 percent of the city's voters came out to vote on such a momentous issue.
Some despaired for democracy, astounded that on as bright and sunny day as last Tuesday was, so few people came out for such a big issue.
Others wondered whether the low turnout had less to do with Issue 4 than it did with the fact that the city council, because of its antics, has become irrelevant to most people. A sideshow, where you pop your head in the tent to see Lizard Boy or The Amazing Bearded Lady.
How, they say, could so few people care about what happens in government in the city where they live?
Well, maybe it's not so bad as all of that. After all, a good four or maybe five of those people you see on Fountain Square will show up for the council election this fall.
Howard Wilkinson's
column runs Sundays. E-mail at hwilkinson@enquirer.com.
Aquarium visitors walk through water
Aquarium previewers impressed
Mother and son match hearts
The true story of politically incorrect mom
The best gift for mothers
UC studies raise doubts about consent
Controversial UC studies
Police look into Miami U dorm fires
College grads face millennium
Landfill debate continues
Meetings set for light rail plan
Tornado victim repays kindness
GET TO IT
Making serious music
Weill piece premieres here
Lullabies next on CSO playlist
A joyful faith, unafraid to be different
Conferences, Web sites support, inform
Precious few cared about major vote
Vote mixes religion and politics
Boehner, lobbyists probed on spending
Eateries hit the spot near river
Mason is Warren's $40M gorilla
Miami dean: Students are family
Tradition comes to Northern Ky.
TRISTATE DIGEST
