An Olympia for all who want to vote. And, where they don’t vote

From Ray Guerra via Facebook:

Olympia for All is a great idea. A non-partisan slate of candidates pushing progressive ideas will at least make this year’s city campaigns interesting. At best, we’ll be able to push the city council to be much more engaged about deep civic issues than they’ve been willing to be in recent years.

But, the “for all” language got me thinking. Specifically, in the “if you don’t vote,  you don’t matter” sort of way. Because while we’d like to think all elections are the results of a uniformly involved citizenry, they are certainly not. And, this is especially true in low profile city-wide elections.

So, here are the neighborhoods that drop off when Olympia votes on its own leaders (darker blue, more voters):

Basically, the westside generally doesn’t show up and the far east towards Lacey doesn’t engage. The only part of Olympia that really matters is South Capitol, down across the highway and then north of Ward Lake.

Usually local campaigns try to focus on these sorts of neighborhoods (at least in my experience). And, within precincts, they try to focus their attention on activating voters that have already shown a likelihood of voting and voting the right way.

In this way, if Olympia for All is a typical campaign, it won’t really be “for all” because it will need to lean on dependable voters. But, if they are more about Everyone, they’ll head out to the light colored dots and try to boost turnout.