Too busy to vote, huh?
You had plenty of company.
Registered voters who skipped the polls during Tuesday's primary election set records for low voter turnout in Philadelphia, Bucks, Chester and Delaware Counties.
Statewide, only 15 percent of the state's 3.5 million registered Democrats cast ballots for the gubernatorial nomination. The GOP primary for U.S. Senate was decided by 19 percent of the state's three million Republicans. Those are the lowest numbers in three decades, records show.
Party leaders, county election officials and experts said the numbers were the natural consequence of a tepid election.
``There were no perceived contests anywhere other than in a few isolated districts. And voters aren't stupid,'' said Frederick L. Voigt of the Committee of Seventy, an election watchdog group based in Philadelphia. ``They won't do something of no consequence. People lead busy lives.''
And so most people in Philadelphia and its suburbs carried on their busy lives Tuesday, uninterrupted by the primary. The city hit a new all-time low for a gubernatorial primary, with only about 18 percent of registered voters participating. Not that having a president atop the primary ballot makes a huge difference: Only 20.7 percent of the city's voters turned out in 1996.
Only about 11 percent of voters in Bucks and Chester Counties showed up at the polls yesterday, setting records. Delaware County did only slightly better.
Even in Montgomery County, the scene of the hotly contested 13th District congressional race, in which U.S. Rep. Jon Fox trounced three Republican challengers, only 16 percent of registered voters cast ballots Tuesday. The low point for voter turnout in Montgomery is a 14 percent record set in 1996.
In one corner of Bucks County, the hardscrabble Bloomsdale Fleetwing section of Bristol Township, only nine Democrats out of 700 registered cast ballots Tuesday.
``It is the end,'' said Bucks County Democratic Chairman John Murray. ``It is absolutely unbelievable.''
The county's election board director, Deena K. Dean, said the 1995 ``motor voter'' law - which makes it easier to register and prevents counties from purging their registration lists of inactive voters as often as they used to - has artificially inflated voter rolls. Still, Dean said, that cannot explain away Tuesday's low percentages.
In Chester County, where the rookie Republican congressman, Joe Pitts, was unopposed on both parties ballots, only 7.5 percent of the 69,763 registered Democrats voted.
