Link: https://www.sos.state.mn.us/media/3616/2018-turnout-polling-place-voting-map.pdf
Minnesota is the 3 time repeat voter turnout champion of the nation, but over a third of the eligible voters don’t bother to “exercise the franchise” when there’s no presidential race on the ballot. While the republicans haven’t won a presidential election here for a half century, those presidential only voters kept the democrats from similar off year clean sweeps until 2010. These democratic party winning streaks both in Minnesota and nationally where the republicans haven’t won an open seat presidential popular vote for three decades prove we democrats are the majority party… When we vote!
Non voters deciding an election are nothing new- In 1990 incumbent republican Rudy Boschwitz’s outing himself as a Jew may have tipped that election to democrat Paul Wellstone as bigoted republicans abandoned him. In the 2000 election in MN2 an early snowstorm that left roads in the more republican suburbs of Minneapolis merely wet while in southwest Minnesota it was colder and icy, reducing democratic turnout and ending the congressional career of democrat David Minge by a mere 155 votes. We followed that up with automatic recounts in the 2008 Senate race and 2010 Governor race, so close elections are nothing new in Minnesota.
Comes 2022 and the loyalists of both parties have become radically disparate democratic (maybe too) progressives vs. a republican faschist cult, and a well armed one at that. With control of everything but the White House determined by a handful to a dozen close races in each house and the constitutional offices, sadly the voters that don’t may throw this election…
And that’s how, without a shot fired, democracies die.
Sassy Democrat 