Begging for Votes

The turnout for the Wilde Lake village elections may have been light but it wasn’t as bad as Hickory Ridge. According to this report by Jennifer Broadwater in The Columbia Flier, last Saturday’s village elections “failed to reach quorum.”

This is not all that unusual in Columbia village elections. A few years ago, when I lived in Town Center, volunteers went around on Election Day trying to round up enough votes to make a quorum after turn out at the polls was anemic. We went begging for votes.

I’ve heard some people say that this only proves that people are generally happy with the way the Columbia Association runs things. They tend to think that the majority of people see no great need to participate in the process because of this. I think it’s something else. I think the whole village election process has become outmoded.