Did voter turnout hurt bond election?
School officials know that turnout for school elections is rarely as high as in a general election. According to pollster Ed Sarpolus of research firm EPIC-MRA, that’s OK, because a low turnout is also key to getting a bond approved. That’s because school districts don’t generally have the ability to “educate” a large number of voters about needs the bond would purport to meet. While low turnout is desirable from the district perspective, a survey by EPIC-MRA revealed another fact: that the turnout in May was too low. That’s especially true in Canton Township, where 15 percent of registered voters cast a ballot. Plymouth and Plymouth Township saw turnouts of 24 percent and 25 percent, respectively. Forty-nine percent of respondents in the bond failure survey by EPIC-MRA said they didn’t vote in the bond election, but nearly all (99 percent) of respondents were considered “active voters,” meaning they voted in the governor’s race in 2002 or in the presidential election in 2004. Sarpolus
