What’s behind Houston’s low voter turnout?
What would it take to get Houston voters to show up to a mayoral election in droves? John Smith — or Big John as everyone knows him — isn’t sure.
“I don’t know why they’re not coming out,” said Smith, who was out Tuesday campaigning for City Council At-Large candidate Danielle Keys Bess. “This race is more important than any race because it’s concerning the leadership of Houston.”
We can relate.
It could be that the anticipated runoff kept people waiting until Dec. 9 to cast a ballot. It could be that the crowded mayoral race is led by two frontrunners who have been staples of Houston politics for decades: where some see experience, others see baggage or stale ideas. It could be the lack of high-profile races, a problem the city of Austin rectified by moving their mayoral elections to presidential election years. It could even be that the switch to four-year mayoral terms lessens the engagement between candidates, incumbents and constituents, as Rice University political science professor Bob Stein suggested on Houston Public Media. Smith thinks part of it could be the long list of mayoral candidates: 17 on the ballot. But across the country, mayoral races tend to see alarmingly low turnout — less than 15%, according to a 2016, 50-city study from Portland State University.
Another explanation for people staying home is apathy, of course. It’s human nature to be drawn to presidential elections, with all their hype and saturating ad campaigns and delicious red meat allegiances. Nonpartisan local races aren’t sexy, but chances are, they’ll have far more impact on your life than whoever is sitting in the White House. That’s what’s frustrating: many people who failed to cast a ballot in this election won’t fail to complain about all the things this election will impact, one way or another: crime, trash pickup, illegal dumping, stray dogs, affordable housing, homelessness, irresponsible development — you name it.
During a lull at the West Gray MultiService Center, Smith tried his best to liven things up a bit.
“Anyone out here for Sheila Jackson Lee?” he shouted to the throngs of campaign workers lining the sidewalk to the entrance. “I ain’t heard her name in an hour.”
It was still early morning and aside from a small crowd queued up before the polling center opened right on time at 7 a.m., voters had been steadily trickling in, assisted by an army of volunteers who kept things moving with little to no wait times.
“I’m out here,” a man sporting a Sheila Jackson Lee shirt called back to Smith. “I hear you and you oughta hear me too.”
A member of the editorial board watched the two jaw back and forth playfully before they came to a truce. It seemed to jolt some of the other campaign workers awake as they began shouting their clever slogans.
Sleepy early morning scenes unfolded at other polling locations, including Iglesia Una Luz En Tu Camino in southeast Houston where a halfdozen poll workers lit up at the sight of a lone voter at 9 a.m.
In polling, Congresswoman Jackson Lee and state Sen. John Whitmire have been neck and neck in the mayor’s race. And even the recent leak of a recording that seemed to capture the congresswoman berating a staffer with a flurry of cutting and creatively deployed profanity didn’t seem to move the needle much in any direction among voters we spoke with Tuesday. They either hadn’t heard of or weren’t phased by the audio.
“When you’re a boss, you’re under a lot of pressure,” said Smith, 66.
Everybody has bad days, echoed Windy Padilla, 47, who voted at the Moody Park polling location Tuesday amid a steady trickle of voters.
“I missed that,” said another voter, a man in his 30s.
Early voting had been largely lackluster. With 239,325 early voters this year, the county topped 2015 and 2019 in absolute numbers. But Harris County has roughly 500,000 more registered voters this year than it did in 2015, meaning early turnout as a percentage of total voters was actually a smidgeon lower this year. Overall, in 2015, the last time there was a mayor’s race with no incumbent, roughly 20% of voters cast a ballot.
“That’s something to be worried about,” Brandon Rottinghaus, a University of Houston political science professor, told the Chronicle.
Just before 11 a.m. Tuesday, Harris County Clerk Teneshia Hudspeth announced more than 40,000 people had voted with relatively few snafus — a victory for the elected official who was suddenly put in charge of the election after the Legislature passed a bill abolishing the election administrator’s office that had overseen elections the past couple elections. By 2 p.m., it was up to 103,000. By 5 p.m., the number ticked up to 161,000.
We’re not thrilled with relatively low mayoral turnout figures but we’re even less thrilled about the lack of good information actually making it into the hands of Election Day voters. One said she hoped she’d voted the right way on the 14 state constitutional amendments, a task she’d studied for on YouTube but couldn’t remember what video it was exactly. Another voter looked for his information on Instagram. A recent transplant from New Orleans said he couldn’t find the candidates running for City Council by looking at the county’s online sample ballot, which is several pages long and buries district-level races towards the end.
All of that is a hard pill to swallow for this editorial board, which believes in the ongoing importance of election endorsements to help voters understand the candidates and issues they’re voting on.
By midday, Smith had some help raising energy levels when Jackson Lee showed up to drum up support.
“I’ll take what happens and run all the way to the finish line. I won’t give up. I won’t stop,” she told the Chronicle while greeting voters.
Whitmire will likely be there too, along with, he hopes, longtime supporters like 97-year-old Kenneth Thompson, a World War II veteran who has backed Whitmire since 1972. Whitmire stopped by Thompson’s birthday lunch at Hacienda, according to the Chronicle, to deliver some gifts, including Houston Rockets tickets.
“Don’t overdo it,” joked Whitmire. “I’m gonna need you to vote in the runoff.”
Wish we could say the same for the vast majority of Houston voters.
The mayor’s race draws relatively unimpressive early numbers.