1 in 5 Decatur Voters Voted on Sunday Sales and Ignored SPLOST

Decatur Metro | November 11, 2011 | 10:25 am

Marty writes in FFAF…

A total of 3762 City of Decatur voters turned out at the polls on Tuesday. That’s about 28% of active voters. This is a little higher than usual for a Decatur municipal election. But if you drill down the numbers a little it gets more interesting.

Of the voters who turned out, 3748 (99.6%) voted on the Sunday Sales referendum.

However, only 2931 of the 3762 (78% of voters) voted on the E-SPLOST question and only 3058 of the 3748 (81.5%) voted in the uncontested Commissioner At Large race (including write-ins).

Thus, we can estimate that about 700 Decatur voters (nearly 1 in 5 who showed up at the polls on Tuesday) showed up only to vote for the Sunday Sales referendum.

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13 Responses to “1 in 5 Decatur Voters Voted on Sunday Sales and Ignored SPLOST”

  1. Siv says:
    November 11, 2011 at 10:31 am

    Well, assuming that those who did not vote on E-SPLOST were the same as those who did not vote for a Commissioner. It’s also possible that every ballot voted on at least two of the issues.

  2. Rebeccab says:
    November 11, 2011 at 10:57 am

    I’m slightly relieved to know that some people who didn’t research the candidate/question, abstained from voting. I have known of people who tried to guess the race of the candidate based on name, or picked the female if they were unsure, and that’s obviously completely wrong.

  3. stearns says:
    November 11, 2011 at 11:10 am

    Well, at least those 817 were sober long enough to come out and vote. Democracy – it ain’t pretty but it gets the job done (some of the time).

  4. At Home in Decatur says:
    November 11, 2011 at 11:27 am

    What about the contested school board election? What percent abstained?

    • Marty says:
      November 11, 2011 at 11:39 am

      315 out of 2425 that turned out in the District 1 precincts did not vote in the Dist 1 school board race. So about 13% in District 1 voted in the Sunday Sales, but not the school board race.

  5. David Harris says:
    November 11, 2011 at 12:12 pm

    Alcohol is pretty easy to understand. E-SPLOST and School Board, not so much.

  6. Sarah says:
    November 11, 2011 at 1:38 pm

    Was it because it was on the second page?? It did have it’s own page, didn’t it?

  7. taxus says:
    November 11, 2011 at 1:48 pm

    I’m glad to hear that some Decatur voters have something other than approving every tax referendum that comes along as their highest priority

  8. Golfball says:
    November 11, 2011 at 3:41 pm

    If I’d known this earlier I would have voted more often, just like in Chicago.