Dear Scoop,
I spent Election Day knocking on doors in my neighborhood. When I read TLS’s “By The Numbers” breakdown the next morning, I had to read one line twice.
According to the county’s unofficial returns that TLS reported, Lakewood counted 22,556 ballots out of 66,776 registered voters. That is about 34 percent. Jackson counted 23,413 out of 42,533, which is 55 percent. Jackson cast 857 more ballots than we did, even though it has about 24,000 fewer registered voters.
Think about what that means. We are one of the largest towns in New Jersey, and on paper one of the strongest voting blocs in the state. On Election Day we were outvoted by a town with about two-thirds as many registered voters.
Some of the gap is easy to explain. Jackson cast nearly twice as many early votes as Lakewood did, 7,656 to 3,945. TLS also reported that one Lakewood district came in at under 8 percent. Our families are large, our days are long, and a Tuesday in November is a hard day to find an hour.
But elected officials and state agencies don’t count families or yeshivos. They count votes. When our numbers are low, it tells Trenton and Toms River that our concerns can wait: busing, school funding, roads, the shuttle, our share of county money. Every request our askanim make from now on starts with that number on the table.
This doesn’t take a big campaign. It takes a few habits:
Sign up for a mail-in ballot once, and it comes to you for every election after that.
Use early voting. It runs for days, including Sunday.
Make voting part of the family schedule, the same way we plan for a simcha.
And bring one neighbor. If every voter who went this year brought one more person, our turnout would double.
Next year there will be another election. Let’s make sure the numbers tell the right story about us. Votes are counted. Let’s make sure ours are.
A Neighbor Who Brought Three Neighbors To The Polls
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It’s also important to factor the difference in political context between Lakewood and Jackson. Jackson is undergoing more demographical upheaval and political tension, which in turn mobilizes voters.
Funny thing is, I had the exact opposite observation.
Jackson had a highly contentious local race going on and only managed to bring out a few hundred more voters than us.
34% turn out without anything major on the ballot Is a pretty decent number. There was no high stakes election on the ballot in Lakewood.
We voted last election and got screwed over. Taxes were raised to a ridicules level. Water, gas and electric became crazy more expensive. Traffic is a nightmare. School bussing is a disaster.
Ho hum. I live in Lakewood, I voted, and the only candidate I voted for who won was Chris Smith.