by
Fred Swift
Hamilton County Reporter
The most striking aspect of Tuesday’s primary election was the fact that in a county with a third of a million residents, a mere 10,000 votes will choose a Superior Court judge and 12,000 can elect a sheriff. This is not a criticism of the winning candidates for these or other offices. They did all they could to encourage folks to vote.
The problem lies with our general public which does not seem to understand the importance of a primary election. There is almost no use in preaching to the choir on this because we can be reasonably certain that most readers of the Reporter voted. But, there are tens of thousands of our citizens who don’t get the message.
Hamilton County votes reasonably well in the November election. But, if folks want to help choose their elected officials, they must vote in the primary. That is where the choices are made. In this county, most local primary winners will be elected without opposition in November.
The most overarching issue of the recent election was attention given to the spreading opioid epidemic which is both a local and national crisis. Most candidates for prosecutor, sheriff, judge and even county council promised that if elected they would attack the problem with renewed energy and new ideas.
County Coroner John Chalfin said Tuesday night during election returns that 18 county citizens are likely fatal victims of the drug so far this year. The coroner’s grim news, as a coroner’s news usually is, was that deaths are running well ahead of this time last year.
On the lighter side, one candidate on Tuesday’s ballot made the unusual request that he not be elected. That was Mike McConnell who was on the ballot for Cicero Town Council. He had told his friends and neighbors that due to recent personal issues, he would rather not win. They heard him. He got 122 votes of the 1,651 cast in the Cicero voting.
The closest election was in Sheridan where only three votes separated Bill Curl from Steve Fisher; however, both earned at-large seats on the town council. Another close vote saw Paul Hensel, a member of a longtime political family, defeat incumbent Paul Bolin for a seat on the Clay Township Board by 26 votes in a four-way race where 23,322 votes were cast.
And, if you think the campaign for the U.S. Senate nomination was nasty, apparently 2,452 of our voters thought it was nasty enough that they chose not to cast a ballot for any of the candidates. Since 43,021 voters went to the polls, but only 40,569 ballots were cast at the top of the ticket where the greatest number is usually found, we can assume that the 2,452 did not want to vote for anyone of the three candidates.