So...

 

KY had some primary elections yesterday and although the results haven't been certified by the KY sec of state yet one can get some rough estimates of voter turnout and it goes a lil something like this:

KY has roughly 3.5 million registered voters. KY has a "closed" primary system which means only registered Democrats and Republicans' can participate in the Primary voting. I hate this system BTW, the reason(s) for its implementation are old, outdated, and patently irrelevant. The main argument being something along the lines of "well we cant have all the members of your political party voting for a weak candidate of our party just so you can whip up on him during the fall election". Its absurd. When has it ever happened? And how many times has it ever occurred? Primaries should all be open across all 50 states, and any registered voter should be able to vote for any candidate they like regardless of their party or the candidate they wish to vote for(s) political party affiliation. 

"In 15 states, at least one party utilizes closed primaries to nominate partisan candidates for these offices."

(One of 15 states, way to go KY!)

"In Kentucky, primary elections are closed, meaning that only registered party members can participate. The winner of a primary election is the candidate who receives the largest number of votes, even if he or she does not win an outright majority of votes cast.'

(A runoff to see who would get a majority of votes the second time around is out of the question crazy? Other states do it. Seems to me if we really wanted to drive voter turnout and get people participating in elections there's whole sets of changes to laws we could implement but as usual I digress :-).

Primary election systems used in Kentucky

The point I'm getting at is this, yesterday we had approximately 680,000 people out of close to 3.5 million registered voters deciding who gets to run for office in the fall.

680,000 / 3500000=19.4 % 

Approximate voter participation for yesterday was 19.4 percent. This number is intentionally skewed higher than it is in reality as I counted ALL registered voters in the state of KY, not just the Dems and Reps that could actually vote in yesterdays primary.

(And I had to do the digging to get the numbers as the results haven't been verified by the KY Sec of State yet)

One in 5 of KYs registered voters are deciding who the rest of the registered voters get to choose from and we wonder why we have extremists on both sides of the political spectrum? People have died in order to be able to participate in this system and yet only 1 in 5 registered voters went to the polls yesterday.

Ezekiel 16:49

“‘Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned..."

It's not just KY, its everywhere.

Queue Brother Brian somebody..."IT'S NOT COMPLICATED!"

And yes I voted :-).