Voters have no choice in two major cities. We can do better.

Voters in many cities across South Florida will go to the polls March 14 to elect mayors and commissioners. Well, a few voters, anyway.

Turnout in March elections is notoriously abysmal, below 10% in some places.

The fact that some voters don’t even have a choice in who runs their city surely contributes to the apathy that leads to low turnouts.

Two such cities are the two largest in Palm Beach County: West Palm Beach and Boca Raton.

Not that candidates didn’t try. In West Palm Beach, Mayor Keith James sued to prevent downtown business leader Rodney Mayo from running.

A judge agreed that Mayo lived in the Lantana home where he housed his dogs, not the West Palm Beach apartment he claimed as his residence.

In Boca Raton, the city council passed an ordinance requiring candidates to prove they live in the district, rather than the burden of proof being on someone challenging a candidate’s legal residency. That derailed the nascent campaign of Bernard Korn, a gadfly who has run before, despite not living within city limits.

We’re not arguing that the mayors were wrong in their actions. But the fact that Mayo did not declare a homestead exemption at either residence leads us to believe that this was a call for the people to make — not a judge.

Nor do we suggest that either mayor should be voted out of office. James has had some controversies in office, but nothing disqualifying, and Singer is well-regarded. Both cities have had mayors who ended their careers under indictment due to conflicts of interest with developers, most recently Susan Haynie in Boca Raton.

The public deserves a choice. These public offices are public trusts. They don’t belong to politicians. They belong to the voters, who ought to have a say in who holds them.

In these two big, vital cities, is there really not one person with the desire, experience, skills and temperament to run?

Is it any wonder that the best Florida Democrats could offer in opposition to Gov. Ron DeSantis was a former Republican governor, when the most Democratic areas of the state appear to have almost no candidate bench at all? Today’s city commissioner could be tomorrow’s state legislator, or member of Congress.

Instead, West Palm Beach voters will sit home on March 14, and Boca Raton voters — those who show up — will decide only whether city council members’ terms change from three years to four.

It’s bad enough that some cities persist in holding municipal elections in March, when they should be on the ballot in November. What’s worse is holding an election when nobody can run.