Under 20 percent of registered voters took part in election
Published 5:59 pm Wednesday, November 8, 2017
As elections results rolled in on Tuesday night, some candidates celebrated victory while others contemplated where their campaign fell short. Despite the wide margins of victory in several local races, it is interesting to wonder what would have happened if more registered voters had come out to the polls on election day.
Only about a fifth of the county’s registered voted in this year’s election, which included the renewal of the Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax, mayoral races in all three cities in the county and city council elections in the three cities.
Additionally, the number of registered voters only make up a fraction of the total population of the county, even adjusting for factors such as age and residency.
According to information from the Troup County Board of Elections, there are 36,259 registered voters in the county. However, only 7,215 cards were cast, meaning less then 20 percent of the people living in the county that were registered to vote actually voted in the election.
West Point had the highest voter turnout of the three cities in the county with 49.5 percent, or 1,013 out of 2,045 registered voters casting their ballots. In LaGrange’s city election, only 29.6 percent of registered voters — or 4,215 out of 14,216 — voted in the election. Similarly, Hogansville saw 27.7 percent of registered voters — or 433 out of 1,563 — cast their ballots.
The closest election in the county was won by a mere 25 votes in Mayor Pro-Tem Steve Tramell’s favor in West Point.
These numbers bare a stark contrast to last year’s election where 26,096 people voted, though voter turnout does tend to be higher during presidential races.
The turnout for the 2016 election was estimated to be about 73.84 percent of voters that were registered in the county at the time.