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What it Means: 9 percent had say
Journal Photo by Walt Unks
The recycled campaign sign for Dan Besse in the Southwest Ward was emblematic: Election is over; now it’s time to govern.
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Published: November 5, 2009
Everything you needed to know about Tuesday's election -- the 1,000 words of this campaign season -- could be seen yesterday morning on the corner of Sherwood Drive and Lockland Avenue in Winston-Salem's Ardmore neighborhood.
A blue-and-green Dan Besse campaign sign of the sort that sprouted across the city's Southwest Ward over the past month had been folded neatly and placed in a green bin along with the rest of the week's recyclables.
Environmental symbolism aside, the message conveyed by the scene was apparent. The election's over. The voters have spoken.
But what to take from it?
Only 9 percent of the 143,269 registered to vote in Winston-Salem bothered. That's sad, but about average. With a significant number of write-in votes cast in "unopposed" races, is the local electoral glass half-empty or half-full?
None of the above
Backers of Mayor Allen Joines, elected to his third four-year term, were among the first to start (off-the-record) sniffing about how the 988 write-in votes would be played and complaining about "negative reporting" hurting the feelings of elected officials and big-time campaign donors.
Last I checked, we held an election Tuesday, not a coronation. Dissent and choices are good.
The surprisingly large number of write-ins cast in the uncontested races for mayor and the South Ward, and a closer-than-expected race in the Northwest Ward tell us that beneath the apathy lies a growing reservoir of resentment.
Nearly 2,500 of the 13,035 ballots cast had no choice marked for mayor, neither the oval for Joines or for a write-in. Some of those blank ballots were no doubt protest non-votes, others oversights and still others left blank by supporters who felt that their votes weren't necessary.
What that means is hard to say. It probably falls somewhere between a vote of "no confidence" at one end of the spectrum and a divine mandate on the other.
This much we do know, however. In the mayor's previous unopposed contest in 2005, write-in votes accounted for just 2.3 percent of the total. This go-round that percentage increased to 9.4 percent.
Of those write-ins, "none of the above" and "anybody else" likely will be near the top of leader board.
"Most of them will probably fall into the category of ‘miscellaneous,'" said Rob Coffman, Forsyth County's director of elections. "We won't record them for a particular candidate until we get five votes. The most interesting were the (votes cast) for Billy Prim."
What to do with unease
The results in the city-council races are easier to interpret.
The fact that the race between Wanda Merschel, an incumbent Democrat representing the Northwest Ward, and low-key challenger Peter Sorensen was close until the last precinct was counted surely indicates a measure of dissatisfaction with the status quo.
So, too, does the eye-popping 42 percent of the 1,655 votes cast in the South Ward for write-in challengers to incumbent Molly Leight, a Democrat.
However you look at the individual contests, taken as a whole, the city election shows that a substantial portion of the city's electorate isn't happy.
There are but two ways for the new council to go about dealing with that unease.
One, play it Chicago-style -- "We won. We'll do as we please" -- and continue about business as usual.
Or acknowledge the unrest and actually move toward the inclusiveness and bipartisanship that the big-boy blowhards in Washington yammer about every four years.
Like that recycled Besse sign indicates, this election is yesterday's news. Now we move on to the hard part: the governing.
ssexton@wsjournal.com
727-7481
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