05.16.11 – Kevin Roden

Today’s editorial in the Denton Record-Chronicle lamented the turn-out of Saturday’s city council election.  Citing only the city-wide turn-out, the editorialist failed to recognize a positive trend emerging out of the District 1 voter stats.  We do not yet know specific voter demographic data from those who came out to vote on election day, but there are hopeful signs from an analysis of the early voting stats of that one district.

A clue for this should have come from the fact that the District 1 early voter numbers surpassed the total number of votes from the 2009 District 1 city council race.  Look at the voter turn-out for the last 4 city council races where the District 1 seat was on the ballot:

At least in District 1, this election served to increase citizen participation in the process – turning around a six year trend in the opposite direction.  And check out these other impressive stats from District 1:

— Many first time voters. 40% of the early voters have no previous record of voting in Denton city elections.  In other words, almost half of the early voters in District 1 were energized to get involved in local government for the first time this year.

— The average voting age dropped dramatically. Previously, the average voter age for District 1 city elections was 61.  The average voting age of District 1 early voters this year was 51 – a ten year drop.  In fact, voters under the age of 40 accounted for 104 of the 254 early voters.

— And they weren’t college kids. Already a local critic has charged the Roden campaign with simply rallying up a bunch of college students for support.  Not that getting university students involved in the process is a bad thing, but this criticism was most likely hoping to diminish any important meaning of this turn-out shift.  Truth be told, only five early voters for this race were under the age of 23.  (This critic based his claim on the seemingly high percentage of apartment dwellers among the early voting crowd, because “only college students live in apartments.”  In fact, only 52 out of the 254 early voters, or 20%, live in apartments.  And the average age of these apartment dwellers?  41 years old.)

These trends are encouraging.  Let’s all work to continue this improvement and to increase involvement beyond the ballot box!