Louisiana has become synonymous with many things over the years.

Everything from the revelry of Mardi Gras celebrations, to the bonding over backyard crawfish boils, to picturesque cypress trees rising from our marshlands to foot-stomping zydeco music has been identified with Louisiana, inside and outside of our state’s boundaries. 

Now there can be one more thing added to that list — voter apathy.

This past Saturday, Louisiana put on an embarrassing show of civic duty as a mere 13.5 percent of registered voters cast a ballot in the special election which featured a Louisiana Treasurer’s race and three constitutional amendments.

That means that only roughly 400,000 people made a decision that affects 2.9 million state residents. 

It wasn’t much better in New Iberia where only 20.4 percent of registered voters voted for or against the half-cent sales tax to fund a new police department for the city.

Apparently we in Louisiana either could care less about possessing the privilege to vote or even worse, don’t care who is making decisions that affects their own livelihood. 

Many experts have said that Louisiana residents are overwhelmed and exhausted with the amount of elections per year to vote, and that Saturday’s atrocious voter turnout is simply a result of an off-cycle (no big races such as governor, U.S. Senate, etc.) special election. 

Those may possibly play some small role in the lack of voter turnout but the harsh reality is that Louisiana residents have cared less and less about voting for the past three decades.

In a post on his Louisiana By The Numbers blog, Director of LSU’s Public Policy Research Lab Mike Henderson states that voter turnout has declined for generations. 

Henderson writes, “In 1983, 53.6 percent of the voting eligible population voted for governor. Just 33.1 percent did so in 2015. The decline is evident across the state offices too. Nearly half of the population eligible to vote cast ballots for State Treasurers in 1987, but just 29.2 percent did so in 2015.”

It is not just big races either.

Back in April, voter turnout for the Third Circuit of Appeal Judge’s race was 12.4 percent, and only 7.7 here in Iberia Parish. The Louisiana Senate race for the 2nd District had 21 percent turnout.

Yet, last year’s presidential election saw a whopping 67.8 percent of Iberia Parish voters come out to vote, which was the same as the state. 

So it is not that we can’t get out to vote we just choose to stay home. But we as a state must do a better job of voting on issues that have more of a social and economic impact on our every day lives than national races. 

Whether it is a local sales tax measure, public service commissioner or judge’s race, these ballot items deserve the same amount, or even more, of our civic duty than do the more glamorous national races. The decisions made on the local and state level have a far more reaching impact than any national measure or race. 

We as Louisiana residents have allowed voter apathy to become synonymous with our great state, and we are the only ones that can now change that perception. Hopefully we are up to that challenge to cast the necessary change.

RAYMOND PARTSCH III

MANAGING EDITOR