Did they vote? How often candidates made it to polls

LIMA — Some stories drip with irony. This is not one of them

The Lima News went fishing through voting records last week to see if the people who will be asking for your vote this year actually take the time to vote themselves. We found they do.

Of the 30 public officials we investigated, 19 of them have voted in every general election since 2000, according to records through the Ohio Secretary of State’s office. Of the remaining 11, eight voted all but one time and two missed just two general elections. The sole public official who did not fare particularly well in our search was Allen County Clerk of Courts Margie Murphy Miller, who missed six of 12 general election votes between 2000 and 2011. Calls to Miller’s office, home and cell phone were not returned last week.

The findings come as a bit of a surprise when you consider national voting averages. In 2010, just 37.8 percent of eligible voters bothered to go to the polls for the general election. Admittedly, 2010 was not a presidential election year, so the number was lower than it likely will be this year. Still, finding people who vote at all, let alone vote in every election, is rare.

“The general population has been increasingly less likely to vote,” said Robert Alexander, associate professor of political science at Ohio Northern University. “In 1996, a little less than half of Americans who were eligible to vote actually did. That was a low point (for a presidential election), but that actually was a pretty consistent decline from the 1960 election, when 63 percent voted

The Secretary of State’s Office has simplified the process of checking voting records. A searchable database on the state website (or linked through the Allen County Board of Elections website) allows people to see if they are registered and check their own record back to 2000. That same base will allow anyone to see anyone else’s voting past by just plugging in a last name, street name and zip.

The database is not without flaws. For instance, Allen County Sheriff Sam Crish is on the record as having not voted until 2008, but Crish was actually registered to vote years earlier. A move to Logan County and back apparently was not recorded in the statewide system. Likewise, Don Kissick, a candidate for Allen County commissioner, moved to Ohio in 2008, so the database only shows his votes from then to now.

The database was set up to merge records from different counties, but it didn’t do the job in all instances, according to Ken Terry, deputy director for the Allen County Board of Elections.

“It’s not flawless. It was supposed to merge the counties, but it wasn’t working perfectly when it started,” Terry said.

The fact that public officials have a higher likelihood of voting than the general public should not come as a surprise, Alexander said. In most cases, people get involved in public life for the same reason they vote: They are interested and engaged in the things going on around them.

“It’s important that you have a voice, especially in county government where people are making choices that really affect your community,” said Allen County Recorder Mona Losh, one of the 19 local officials who can boast a perfect voting record since 2000.

For Losh, voting is a habit developed when she was a child growing up in Bluffton.

“My parents always voted. They never talked about it and they never talked about who they voted for. In fact, it wasn’t until I was an adult and running for office myself that I even knew what party they voted for, but they voted and taught us to,” Losh said.

The good news is that finding folks like Losh who vote regularly might be less rare in the future. Since the low of 1996, voting averages have been on the rise, particularly in presidential election years. In 2004, 55.3 percent of eligible votes made it to the polls, up from that 1996 low of 49.1 percent. By 2008, that number was 56.8 percent.

There are a variety of issues that voter increase could be attributed to, Alexander said.

“The issues have become more salient to Americans. In the 1990s, we had relative peace, the economy was in pretty good shape, there wasn’t a lot to get upset about. By the 2000s, we had a two-front war, the economy hurting, we had a lot to care about, so people cared enough to vote,” Alexander said.

The other issue is that recent elections have illustrated how much one vote can count, Alexander said.

“The closeness of the election matters quite a bit. In 2000 and 2004, we had elections that came down to one state. The incentive for people to go out there and cast their vote was very high,” Alexander said.