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June 10, 2010

9th District sees big drop in turnout for runoff, but Whitfield vote holds steady

Charles Oliver charlesoliver@daltoncitizen.com

Whitfield County bucked a long trend in Tuesday’s special election runoff for Georgia’s 9th District congressional seat.

Some 4,021 voters turned out for the runoff between former state Rep. Tom Graves of Ranger (the winner) and Lee Hawkins, down slightly from the 4,062 that voted in the special election four weeks ago. The turnout rate among registered voters remained basically flat, 11.08 percent in the runoff compared to 11.19 percent in the special election.

Those percentages are based on data provided by the Georgia Secretary of State, which has a slightly different number of eligible voters than the Whitfield County elections and registrars office.

By contrast, turnout for the district as a whole dropped to 10.4 percent in the runoff from 13.4 percent in the special election, which featured eight candidates. Experts say that decline is pretty typical. In 2007, for instance, turnout for a special election for Georgia’s 10th District congressional seat was 13 percent, while turnout for the runoff four weeks later was 11 percent.

Dalton Mayor David Pennington led a campaign to get Whitfield County residents out to the polls for the runoff.

“We were pleased. We aren’t going to be satisfied until we get to No. 1,” Pennington said. “But we went from 10th to third in voter turnout (percentage of eligible voters voting among the 15 counties in the district). We were the only county of the 15 counties not to drop significantly. If you take Whitfield County out of the 9th District, the other counties averaged almost a 24 percent drop, and the northwest counties — Walker, Catoosa and Dade — dropped almost 50 percent.”

Pickens County had the highest share of eligible voters voting in the special election, with 21.25 percent turning out. Hall County led during the runoff, with 16.03 percent of eligible voters voting. Hall County is home to Hawkins.

Pennington noted that the northwest Georgia counties that saw such large drops in turnout were ones where former Chickamauga City Council member Steve Tarvin ran well during the special election. Tarvin won Catoosa and Walker and finished second in Dade, but he wasn’t on the runoff ballot.

Pennington said he plans to continue his efforts to get people out to the polls for the July 20 primaries and for the November general election.

“We’ll get better. We are going to get more people involved, more large businesses. We want them to remind people to vote. They can early vote now for the July 20 primary,” Pennington said.

Whitfield County registrar Kay Staten said she’d hoped that turnout might actually increase for the runoff after more people voted early for it than voted early for the special election. But she said she was happy to at least hold steady when all the other counties saw big drops. Staten said she hopes the numbers for the runoff portend a large turnout for the July 20 primaries. Twenty percent of Whitfield County’s registered voters turned out for the general primary four years ago.

“It costs just as much for a few people to vote as it does for everyone to vote,” she said.

 

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