Another round of city elections has come and gone, the tenth that I've covered as a reporter for the Deseret News.
The 1997 elections were no nastier or more issue-laden, on the whole, than those of 1979, my first municipal balloting.But the disappointing trend of fewer and fewer voters turning out for the elections continues.
Of course there are notable exceptions.
American Fork voters turned out relatively well Tuesday. The mayor and city council have been battling there for more than a year and fed-up citizens let their voices be heard.
But only 18 percent of voters showed up in Salt Lake City - which didn't have a mayoral contest this year but did have four important, and highly contested, City Council races.
In 1979, after city voters in the spring chose to change their form of government from commission to council/mayor, only 44 percent of city voters in November exercised their privilege to pick a new mayor and council.
In 1995, when Salt Lake Mayor Deedee Corradini was fighting for her political life amid various charges of personal financial problems, only 45 percent of registered voters in the city voted.
And this week, despite a number of difficult issues in many city elections, once again less than half of the registered voters went to the polls in most cities and towns.
No one has an answer to such apathy.
One Sandy City election judge called the Deseret News on Thursday to complain that at her polling district area - where there is a significant population of people between 18 and 30 - most of those voting were older residents.
"We had people coming in with walkers, on oxygen lugging around a canister, old people who have a hard time getting around. Yet they came to vote (Tuesday). And we saw very few younger adults. It's sad," she said.
Some blame the media; a convenient whipping boy.
The news that gets in the newspapers and on TV is mostly negative, many say. Various political scientists point out that if a voter hears bad things about both candidates they tend not to vote at all, rather than go to the polls and vote for the lesser of two evils.
Others blame the American campaign system, where huge amounts of money are needed to communicate with voters in U.S. House, Senate, gubernatorial and certainly presidential races.
But city elections should be different.
Most local newspapers give considerable space to candidates to talk about the issues. Because there are so many candidates that a statewide newspaper like the Deseret News covers, each candidate gets only a certain space. But mayoral candidates usually get at least one story to speak directly to readers.
And money often doesn't make the difference in local races. The candidates that I talked to this season spent relatively small amounts of cash - $2,000 here, maybe $4,000 there. One Salt Lake City Council candidate spent $20,000 - a large amount for that race - yet still lost.
Most council districts, even in the larger cities, are still small enough that a candidate with a good pair of shoes can walk the district once in a campaign.
The late Alice Shearer, who unfortunately passed away this summer, was a member of the first Salt Lake City Council, representing the east-central part of the city.
Alice was a student of practical politics. She knew her district. And she walked it, visiting one house of a friend of mine three times during the summer and fall campaign of 1979. She won that race and won re-election in 1981.
But while neighborhood, grassroots politics may be inexpensive, it apparently doesn't push most people to go out and vote.
And that's unfortunate.
As I've written a number of times, the decisions made by city councils, mayors and state legislators impact a person's life more often than those made by Congress and the president.
Got a speeding ticket recently? The speed limit was set by a city or county official, most likely.
See your garbage pick-up fee increase? A city council or county commission decision.
Find out you can't make a complaint against a tradesperson because that trade isn't licensed? Your problem falls in the lap of the Legislature, which passes licensing law.
Different ideas have been floated in the Legislature to encourage voting, even one where a voter would get a receipt after depositing their ballots and use that receipt to get a $5 or $10 credit on their state income taxes.
The argument against the idea was that one shouldn't be paid to do something they should - like voting, attending parent/teacher conferences or walking your dog.
But low voter turnout has gotten so bad the latter part of this century in Utah and America, all new ideas should be considered in reversing the unhealthy trend.