According to the Sentinel’s election rundown, turnout among the city’s 16,598 registered voters was 12 percent. Put another way, that’s 88% of people who are registered to vote that decided that the election wasn’t important enough to bother. Despite the claims of those who advocate for controlling their neighbors, the Keene election is hardly a mandate against liberty. It’s the same as always: a superminority of people are the ones who decide the winners and those people are usually those who support “the state”. Everyone else is too busy with important things like their lives.
Clearly, despite the excellent slate of liberty-oriented candidates, the average people of Keene did not fear freedom so much that they decided to come vote against us. Turnout this year was nothing unusual. Alternately, they did not desire freedom so much that they decided to come out and vote for us. Most people are in-the-dark as to what is happening here. Only the politically aware are likely to vote in municipal elections, and politically aware people tend to be those who wish to control others, hence, the easy wins for aggression-supporting candidates.
Surely the political class is resting easy with their victories, however, they should keep in mind that should the “sleeping giant” of average folks awaken, it would only take 2-3% of the population of Keene to come out and vote for liberty to completely flip the tables. For instance, I got 10th place out of 10 in the at-large race. However, I’d have needed only 700 votes to have made 5th place and won a seat on the council. 700 is about 3% of Keene’s 23,000 population. What could motivate those people to actually vote? Your guess is as good as mine.
P.S. Thanks to all those who voted for liberty-oriented candidates!