Early voting starts today in 89 of North Carolina’s 100 counties. It’s an off-year election cycle, meaning it doesn’t align with regular Congressional elections and turnout is often lower. Additionally, local elections have lower turnout – period.
A Pitt County nonpartisan voter information organization aims to provide information to voters about local candidates, and in turn, boost turnout. Voter411ENC was cofounded by ECU journalism professors Cindy Elmore and Brian Massey, and they asked every candidate in county and municipal elections in Pitt County the same eight questions.
“You can learn a lot about the candidates from these responses,” Elmore said.
Their website posted candidates’ responses – word for word – on their website. Some responses are specific, while others provide broad visions for the direction of their city or town.
Elmore says she got the idea for the website when she moved to Winterville and couldn’t find information about her local candidates.
“I wanted to be a responsible voter, and I could find nothing,” she said.
Elmore and Massey both covered city government as reporters. When they got together for the project, they used their experience to inform their candidate questionnaire.
Turnout in local elections is strikingly low. In the 2019 elections, just 16% of Pitt County voters cast a ballot. That’s down from 48% from just a year earlier, when U.S. House elections and a U.S. Senate seat were on the ballot.
As a former local politics reporter, this fact stuns Elmore.
“In general, I think democracy works best when people vote,” Elmore said. “I don’t care who people vote for, I truly don’t. I just want people to vote on the basis of something more than a yard sign.”
Elmore says turnout in local elections is low because voters are not informed about local candidates. News staffs have been cut down over the last few decades, and some areas have become “news deserts,” or areas without a local news outlet. That means local municipal coverage is lacking in many areas.
The Voter411ENC website aims to fill that gap and provide some basic information about candidates’ priorities, so that voters can feel informed before they cast their ballot. Elmore says that, in many ways, local elections may be the most important elections to participate in.
“You pay tax money and that goes to your local city or town and they’re the ones spending that money. Collectively, it’s billions and billions of dollars that are spent by local officials. All kinds of things are decided at the local level.”
Candidates responses are available at voter411ENC.org.
