DECKER

If you’re inclined to follow politics even halfheartedly, the buildup to Tuesday’s midterms grew deafening. Pundits predicted an epic showdown between Right and Left. As the night dragged on, they talked of a blue wave crashing into a red wall.

In neighborhoods like Starner’s, the election came and went with barely a ripple.

According to the Ohio secretary of state, voter turnout statewide was 54.3 percent. Turnout was higher than gubernatorial election years in 2014, 2010 and 2006, although it did not approach the 71.3 percent turnout in 2016 that put Donald Trump in the White House.

Tuesday’s turnout in Franklin County also was 54 percent, with more than 476,000 ballots cast. But to dial down to individual voting precincts is to reveal the stark disparities behind that average.

In communities such as Upper Arlington, New Albany and Dublin, voter turnout at some precincts topped 70 percent.

In precincts like Columbus 31-C, where Starner lives, the turnout was abysmal. Only 21 percent of the registered voters in Starner’s precinct cast a ballot, according to the Franklin

County Board of Elections. Starner was one of more than 800 who stayed home.

He voted in the 2016 presidential election, and the outcome was largely the reason he didn’t bother this time.

“I voted, and he still got in,” he said of Trump.

Starner descended his front steps gingerly and walked with a slight limp; he is due for back surgery necessitated by a car crash. Yet the Democrats’ rallying cry — that his health care might be in grave danger if the GOP prevailed Tuesday — did not outweigh his feeling of disenfranchisement.

For Tonjameia Smith, another resident of 31-C, it was more a matter of logistics. The day ran away from her, as days can do when you are a young mom and have a 1-year-old son and 3-year-old daughter to look after.

“I really wanted to go,” she said. She relies on family to watch her children when she can, but they are busy with their own lives. Asked whether she voted in the 2016 presidential election, she smiled sheepishly and acknowledged that she did not, for the same reason.

Oralia Cosby, 46, lives in the Canonby Court apartments in South Franklinton. In her precinct, 37-B, turnout was just 15 percent. She has voted in past elections but didn’t this time due to a recent death in her family.

As she waited at her

daughter’s school bus stop, Cosby speculated on the poor turnout in her precinct. Voter apathy was a problem, but there were practical considerations too, such as a lack of transportation. Their polling place, Dodge Recreation Center, is more than a mile away on the other side of I-70. If it were at the much closer Sullivant Gardens Recreation Center, the turnout would improve, she said.

Don Stinson lives on Sullivant Avenue in a precinct where turnout was 23 percent. He also flew a U.S. flag on Wednesday, but not even his proximity to Dodge Recreation Center is enough to make him vote. The same goes for his wife.

“We haven’t voted in over 40 years,” he said.

Stinson is a jovial guy and quick to laugh, but his disgust of politics is bipartisan. He believes politicians will say anything to get elected and serve only themselves and their own interests once in office. He wants no part of it.

Stinson is 61. His daughter votes, but she hasn’t managed to change her father’s mind.

“One person is not going to make that much of a difference anyway,” he said.

Seven hundred and ninety-five other registered voters in his precinct stayed home Tuesday.

Some of them, surely, felt just the same.