Local officials, election workers and candidates as busy preparing for the upcoming 2023 general election. But it’s an off year, which historically sees lower participation rates.
As of Thursday afternoon, fewer than 400 people had voted in Monroe County.
For the general election, eleven municipal positions and one referendum are on the ballot in Monroe County. Of those, only one race is contested — Bloomington City Council District 3’s race between Republican nominee Brett Heinisch and Democratic nominee Hopi Stosburg.
Brett Heinisch is the only republican trying to get elected on Monroe County’s ballot. He ran in part, to let people know they have options.
“You end up with one institution dominating everything and it becomes reflective of that institution,” he said. “I think it's important to have more competition, because that pushes people to do better.”
Heinisch volunteered on several campaigns and interned for politicians such as Todd Young. He has some ideas for local policies but wants to hear from constituents about their needs.
“New issues I may not have even thought of on the campaign trail could show up and those will have to be addressed, too,” he said. “So I want to make sure I'm hearing from my constituents. So that I can get those new needs as they come up addressed just as well.”
David Henry is on the Monroe County Election Board and the chair of the Monroe County Democratic Party. He agrees a contest of ideas is important and said the district 3 council seat is a more completive one.
Some districts have elected the same representative for a decade or more, for example, Dave Rollo in district 4, Henry said. But voters in district 3 have elected four different representatives in the last 16 years.
Henry said having more than 50 percent participation in 2018’s off-year election was unusually high. But that was a county election, not municipal, like this year.
In 2019, another off year with municipal elections, Indiana had a 23 percent turnout rate on election. In 2015, the rate statewide was 20.5 percent.
Turn out rate in Monroe County in 2015 was just over 12 percent.
Henry feels optimistic because of high local Democratic voter turnout in this year’s primary. The voter turnout rate was 17 percent, statewide it was 12 percent.
This year, 513 seats in Indiana are listed as “no election” — meaning the nominees ran unopposed and local election boards decided not to hold elections for those seats. That includes Stinesville and Ellettsville, where there were no contested races.
Henry says this can be attributed to Americans politically becoming more polarized, which started in the 1970s.
“That sorting that's going on, where counties are getting either red or blue, instead of purple, if you will, is a challenge,” he said. “You'll notice that in a lot of ways Monroe County is sort of a mirror image of neighboring counties where you may see a 90 percent Republican turnout versus a Democratic turnout. But that is a phenomenon that's occurring.”
Even though no county positions are on the ballot this year, Monroe County is holding a full election because of MCCSC’s referendum.
And regardless of turnout, lead workers start preparing months before early voting begins — talking lay out with the election supervisor, recruiting workers and onboarding people to work early voting — just to name a few of their tasks.
Kathy Ruark, an early voting democrat lead, helped prepare poll workers a few weeks ago, showing them how to work polling technology and help voters.
“Whether it's a municipal election or a national election, we still get concerned about does everything match, and has everything been done in accordance with election law.”
Hopi Stosberg, the democratic candidate for Bloomington city council district 3, said it feels weird to be the only contested local race on the ballot. Some of her democratic colleagues that got elected to city council in the primary forgot she was in a contested race.
“Just because they're not having to think about an election,” Stosberg said. “They're not having to think about campaigning, they're not having to think about any of those things that I am having to think about. They've skipped this step.”
Campaigning is challenging when so much focus was put on the primary, she said. Voters might not be talking as much as if races had a history of being contested.
“And I think that happens locally. I think it happens in Bloomington locally, with a lot of Dems on the ballot, and not very many independents or Republicans on the ballot,” Stosberg said. “But I've lived in other areas of Indiana where the opposite happened.”
In the general election this year, 44 of 109 mayoral races were unopposed. Of 109 city clerk and city clerk treasurer positions, 78 were unopposed.
In 2019's general election, 34 of 106 mayoral races were unopposed. Of 113 clerk and clerk-treasurer races, 80 were unopposed in the general election.
A previous, radio version of this story compared voter participation in 2010 and 2014, which were county election years. This is not an accurate comparison for participation in this year’s municipal election and a correction has been made.
