Here is a question we as a town must ask ourselves after each city election: Can a City Council that is selected by less than 4 percent of the eligible voters be considered a representative government?
The number of eligible voters in Denton is something approaching 60,000. In Saturday's election for four seats on the Denton City Council, 2,192 people turned out to vote, less than 4 percent of the electorate. Such a figure is scandalous. There were socialist republics in the old USSR that could lay a better claim to democracy in the midst of the Cold War than the city of Denton can today.
This is not the fault of our city government. It is not the fault of the incumbents who run for re-election or the candidates who challenge them. It is the fault of the thousands of residents who simply don't care enough about how their city is governed to get off their duffs and vote.
We think it significant that it's been a long time since we've heard a winning political candidate in Denton (or a gracious loser, for that matter) utter the old cliche that "the people have spoken." The people don't speak in Denton anymore, not in any great numbers. They stay home on election day and let a tiny number of their fellow citizens make the decisions that they themselves should be making - decisions that will affect their lives every day.
There are generally two schools of thought as to why this is so. We don't think either of them holds water.
One school holds that the people are satisfied with the way things are being run. If they weren't, so this theory goes, the electorate would rise up in righteous anger and throw the rascals out.
We don't buy that. We have been watching people and politics for longer than we care to reveal, and we have never see any candidate, any issue or any political administration that had the tacit support of 96 percent of the electorate.
The other school of thought holds that some sort of evil cabal has control of the city government and that a demoralized electorate feels powerless to challenge it.
We don't buy that, either. Yes, incumbents have an advantage - they always have - but a challenger with an appealing message always has a chance, if he or she offers a better alternative.
As an example, we cite Saturday's vote in the race for the City Council in District 3, where incumbent Jim Engelbrecht faced a strong challenge from coffeehouse owner Mike Sutton. Engelbrecht had a generally solid record on the council, but Sutton had hammered him hard on the council's decision to implement a new policy on city utility late payments and deposits. It was a legitimate campaign issue, with Sutton taking the more populist position that the new policy worked a hardship on the poorer customers in the city.
Engelbrecht seems to have eked out a victory, but the margin was close enough that Sutton was vowing late Saturday night to seek a recount, as he should.
Not only does the District 3 race disprove the theory that incumbents are invincible in Denton, it also shows why democracy is served poorly by an apathetic electorate. Engelbrecht received 52.7 percent of the vote, not a landslide percentage but a respectable margin of victory in a hotly contested two-man race. But so few people voted that his victory percentage meant almost nothing: Engelbrecht's actual margin of victory was only 29 votes, an edge that might disappear in a recount.
The persistent critics of city government are wrong. It is not the elected officials of Denton who have too much power; it is, through no fault of their own, the public-spirited 4 percent who vote. Those people didn't ask for such inappropriate power; they probably don't even want it. All they're doing is being good citizens.
But their power needs to be diluted by the votes of thousands of other good citizens. That is how the voice of the people finally gets heard.
