There are
approximately 25,000 registered voters in the still somewhat townish City of
Watertown.
In the last
meaningful city election, in 2021, when seats for the City Council were
contested (unlike the election of 2023), approximately 6,000 of those 25,000
registered voters saw fit to cast a vote.
Growing up in
ancient times, members of my generation were taught that voting was a civic
duty for all citizens and that exercising that sacred duty should not be
taken lightly.
When one of
my sixth-grade classmates asked why voting should be considered sacred, our
teacher’s answer was blunt and uncharacteristically emotional. She said: If it
were not for the sacrifices of our parents and grandparents, we would all be
speaking German.
What did
that have to do with voting? some of us wondered. She left it to us to connect
the dots.
Over the years, voting has gotten easier and easier.
In Watertown, we can vote early, vote by mail, or vote in person on election
day, any time we want, from 7 am to 8 pm.
Yet in this
coming election on November 4, we can reasonably expect that about 19,000 − 76
percent! − of our friends and neighbors will make a conscious decision not to participate.
Watertown is
not an outlier. Our low participation rate is about par for the course across
the country. Voter participation, especially in local elections, has been
declining for decades. If I were king, Saving Private Ryan would be
mandatory viewing in every public school in the country, and if my sixth-grade
teacher were still alive, she would thank me.
And I would thank her.
The question
is: why is this basic level of participation in our democracy so pathetically
low?
Surveys confirm
what you already know. One big reason is that non-voters are often quietly
cynical. Simply put, they doubt that their vote would make a difference. When
you challenge a non-voting friend or acquaintance, they just might hit you with
the age-old adage: You can’t fight city hall!
Why can’t
you fight city hall? Because: They do whatever is good for them and couldn’t
care less about what’s good for us.
Is that just
an excuse to be lazy and happily uninvolved? Probably, for some. But for many,
mistrust of government is the result of their own experiences, when government turned
a blind eye to their problems and grievances or got involved and made things
worse.
The way I
see it, our local leaders – elected and appointed – have a choice. They can
take the easy road and say to the non-voting majority of our community:
The hell
with you! We and
the voting minority that put us in charge will make our decisions without you.
Or they could
take the hard road and get to know our fellow residents one door-knock at a
time. Would they encounter a lot of simmering cynicism? Of course they would.
But might those
city “outreachers” also gain a valuable understanding of the mistrust that
makes the vast majority of Watertown’s registered voters sit on the sidelines?
And, as a
result, might our elected and appointed leaders discover for themselves that
lost trust can actually be regained − not always, but sometimes − with a
well-strategized good-faith effort?
I will bet you that someone in your orbit had
this experience. While out running errands, they parked their car on Main
Street or in the parking lot behind CVS or the library, or stepped off a bus,
or strolled from their home to the conveniently located main post office with
their mail and/or package in hand, only to be stunned that it was no longer
there.
Who do you
think those individuals blamed for the loss of a convenience they had always
depended on and never imagined would be taken away? It’s a safe bet that they cynically
blamed City Hall – the institution, they believe, that will usually do what it wants
to do with little regard for the lives being lived by the average person.
Mistrust of
government is certainly not limited to Watertown, but just because it might go
unrecognized and unaddressed in many other cities and towns does not mean that
it should go unrecognized and unaddressed here, within these walkable four
square miles.
Why is there
not an official recognition of the consistently poor election turnout that
decides who the nine citizens are that will represent all of us on our
legislative body?
Why can’t we
aim to flip the script and resolve to produce majority election turnouts instead
of lopsided election ‘sitouts’? Let’s imagine that a future edition of Watertown’s
government decides to flip that script. How would they go about it? Not by
making voting easier. That’s already been done.
First, our
elected leaders would have to do what they are naturally disinclined to do. They
would have to face up to the cynicism and mistrust of the very institution they
represent.
Then, they
would have to find a way to address that cynicism and mistrust.
You already
know what I’m going to say. There is nothing more powerful than going to a
person’s home, ringing their doorbell, introducing yourself, and saying: We (your
government) would like to know what YOU think – especially when the person
making that statement really does want to know what YOU think.
In a battle
to end cynicism, sincerity could turn out to be surprisingly disarming.
If you
happen to agree that non-participation in our city elections demands attention,
then you just might feel the same way about the level of non-participation in the
single most consequential decision-making process of our time.
Welcome to the
project known as The Watertown Square Area Plan – a project that will
change Watertown beyond the imagination of the average Watertown resident, who currently
knows little or nothing about what it entails and where it could lead.
For those
Watertown residents whose lives are consumed with raising families, caring for
elders, coping with the escalating cost of living, or dealing with challenges
that are none of our business, and may be digitally unconnected, the sudden
loss of the main post office was just a bitter appetizer; a misguided
transformation of Watertown Square might be the undigestible main course.
How many
members of the community are relatively clueless about the plan? I can’t give
you a number because City Hall has made no effort to find out.
What should
be an easier question to ask is how many members of the community have cast a
vote or expressed their opinion in any public forum on any aspect of the plan?
Well,
there’s no real non-fuzzy data on that either, but this is fertile ground for
an amateur detective, which in this case, is me.
Did you
guess somewhere around 6,000, the measly 24 percent of the community that will
likely vote in this November’s election? If you did, you were way off.
If you add
up all the events, which include “ Kitchen Table Conversations,” charettes,
placing sticky notes on white boards, online surveys, and meetings that took
place at several different venues, and you add up all of the participants, I
think you would find that there have been several hundred participants, not several
thousand.
But to get the real participation story, we
need to try to boil it down to the nitty-gritty − how many unique
individuals contributed to the administration’s understanding of what they
refer to as “the majority of public opinion” of the plan.
The reality
is that we can’t know how many unique individuals weighed in on the
Watertown Square Area Plan, because City Hall doesn’t know how many unique
individuals weighed in. And I’m not sure they want to know.
If you go
back and watch recordings of the meetings, you just might conclude, as I have,
that hundreds of opinions were presented by dozens of highly motivated and
opinionated contributors, including a loud and rehearsed contingent of housing
activists, all adding up to a sliver of the greater community.
Do I have it
right, or am I way off base? I don’t think that many of you will study the
hours upon hours of recorded meetings, as I have, to decide for yourselves, so
I will make my case, as best I can, working through the pile of fuzzy data, in
my next blog post, which will be titled:
Watertown’s Crisis of Mistrust and the Man
Who Called It Out.
And, no,
that man was not me.
To be
continued…
Bruce
Coltin, The Battle For Watertown
