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The abysmal voter turnout at my East Charlotte voting place was evident when I entered the lobby at 11 a.m. Tuesday. I was the only voter in the room. The poll worker who gave me the slip of paper to write my name and address on said I was voter No. 107.
In the end, voter turnout at my precinct was even lower than I thought. Forget the 21 percent countywide turnout that elections board officials announced Wednesday. When I scoured the elections board map, my voting place - a precinct that's predominately white with about one-third black voters - was near the cellar of voter participation. Just 13 percent of eligible voters cast a ballot.
Newly elected mayor Anthony Foxx did win my precinct, but by fewer than 100 votes. The precinct was one of the 30 Foxx won that were in GOP Mayor Pat McCrory's win column just two years ago.
Mecklenburg County and my precinct weren't alone in low turnout. Nationwide voter participation plummeted. Last year's turnout for the presidential election was 66 percent in Mecklenburg County, 64 percent nationwide. The 2007 Mecklenburg vote that included the last Charlotte mayoral race turned out 24 percent of eligible voters.
The voters least likely to show up Tuesday? Young voters. It seems the energy that brought them out last year when Barack Obama was on the ticket fizzled this year. So on Wednesday, White House adviser David Axelrod was on Fox News stating the obvious as he looked ahead to the 2010 midterm Congressional elections: Democrats must motivate the voters who voted for them the last time - independent voters, many of whom are young voters.
In truth, both parties should be strategizing about how to get and keep young people engaged in the political process. Decker Ngongang of Generation Engage has some thoughts on how to do that.
A lot of you probably know or might remember Ngongang. The West Charlotte High and N.C. State University grad worked at Bank of America here before getting involved with the nonpartisan Generation Engage, the Washington-based youth-civic-engagement initiative founded in 2004. He was also a community columnist for the Observer in 2004.
From his new perch as executive director - he was deputy director until recently - Ngongang is immersed in getting young Americans engaged in their communities and active participants in democracy.
He wasn't surprised that young people didn't come out to vote this time. The Obama campaign was a "cultural aberration," he said, and the political process didn't embrace "that mode" of campaigning.
What mode of campaigning was that? I asked. It's where people who looked like the people who were being asked to vote knocked on voters' doors. "Obama's people understood that people respond to people they know, people in their community," Ngongang said. And for young people, "it's less about what you're selling but how you're selling it," he said.
Anthony Foxx, Ngongang said, "did a decent job of that."
But Generation Engage sees the issue more broadly. "We want to untie civic engagement from voting, and tie it to community involvement. To move the dial on political engagement, we've got to get young people invested in the system," he said.
To that end, Generation Engage is partnering with community colleges to connect young people with ways to learn about and get involved in community, and provide opportunities for them to see how they can have impact. The group already has partnership plans with Central Piedmont Community College.
Ngongang has some advice for new mayor Foxx to spur greater involvement of young people and others who haven't actively participated in the political process. He said Foxx (and school board member Trent Merchant) took part in the first event Generation Engage held in Charlotte, so Foxx seems to understand the need.
That advice? Foster less of a "leadership hierarchy" - that's the traditional Charlotte way - and more of a "community culture" of involvement. "Make the politics local" by encouraging street-by-street, grass roots participation. "Empower organizations" by seeking them out for input.
But Ngongang also said that young people need to recognize their own power. With the Charlotte mayoral election decided by 3,239 votes, CPCC students eligible to vote "could have swayed the election," he noted.
In 2010, that kind of youth power will be in demand once again.
