Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Election Turnout

Since Valentine's Day, Wisconsin has been in political turmoil over new Republican Governor Scott Walker's plans to reshape Wisconsin.  There have been numerous demonstrations at the Capitol and throughout the state protesting Walker's plan to ban unions for pubic employees.  There has been praise (and outrage) heaped on 14 Democrat state senators who left the state to slow down the Republican tide of change.  There have been very active recall campaigns initiated for Republican (and Democrat) state senators.  These political developments have dominated the news in Wisconsin not to mention political news nationwide.

All of this happened in the weeks leading up to the annual Spring non-partisan elections which coincided in some places with partisan primary elections.  As noted in an earlier post, I was curious how all this political fervor would translate into voter turnout at the polls. 

While the final results are not yet complete for the hotly contested statewide election for Supreme Court Justice (which at last count had challenger Joanne Kloppenburg leading incumbent David Prosser by 311 votes), we do have a pretty good picture of voter turnout overall.

To see what the picture tells us, let us use the only statewide race on the ballot yesterday.  Since 2000, there have been six contested races for Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice on the April ballots (including the one yesterday).  Until yesterday, the highest voter turnout in those races had been just over 20% in 2000.  In the four races since then (until yesterday) the total votes cast in each election actually declined slightly on each occasion with the lowest voter turnout being in the race between incumbent Shirley Abrahamson and challenger Randy Koshnick in 2009 where the turnout was approximately 18%. 

In an abrupt and dramatic shift in this pattern, the turnout statewide yesterday appears to have been approximately 33.5%.  In other words, approximately 70% more voters voted for a Supreme Court Justice candidate yesterday than voted in the same race in 2009 when the last contested race for that office was held.  So, the good news is voter interest, voter participation, and voter commitment seems to be substantially increased.

The bad news is that despite the most visible and hotly debated political climate in Wisconsin that I can recall, barely one out of three people who were eligible to vote bothered to.  That, my friends, is embarassing and disgusting. 

People in countries around the world are fighting and dying to have the opportunity to vote in elections, or are dying because their leaders are desperately attempting to prevent them from gaining that right.  This country was founded when of our forefathers demanded the right to vote for how they wanted to be governed and went to war with their King to obtain it.  The apathy is hard for me to stomach.

Monday, April 4, 2011

Eagle Eye

On the east coast of Iowa, just south of that part of the West Coast of Wisconsin where I live, an extremely popular webcam is aimed at the nest of a pair of American Bald Eagles.  How popular is the webcam?  Well, when I took my first look at it, during the first quarter of the NCAA basketball championship game, over 104,000 people were watching (or also watching - as the case may be) the nest.

Those watching the nest longer than me would have had the opportunity to see the first of three eggs laid on February 23rd and the first eaglet hatched on April 1st.  The webcam is visible 24 hours a day.  During hours of darkness, everything is almost as clear as during the day due to an infrared light (which is not visible to the eagles) illuminating the scene for the camera at night.  Viewing the webcam has been so popular the amount of traffic actually crashed the system for about two hours on Saturday when the first eaglet hatched.

The camera is operated by the Raptor Resource Project.  To view the cam and see a live episode of Wild Kingdom along West Coast Wisconsin, follow this link:  http://raptorresource.org/falcon_cams/index.html