Weighing in on Low Turnout During July 31 Senatorial By-Election

An Analysis
By Sherman C. Seequeh
(Contributing Writer)

There has been much ado about low turnout in the last senatorial by-elections. Most of the reasons are quite amusing. That many did not vote because a barely six-month-old government has failed is just one. And people have their right to say what they think about the elections, and their interpretation of the political inertia evolving amongst the citizens. They may not be wrong that they too have their perspectives. It is all just about hurried conclusions—the same more conclusions anyone can reach to spice up their personal feelings and make them authentic by the pitch of their voices and the weight of their pens.

If Liberians excitedly voted intermittently in 12 years under the immediate erstwhile administration and they could hardly do the same in just six months under the new dispensation, it would be hypocritical if not dishonest to lay the cause on the latter administration. Those who look beyond the ordinary landscape of politics and its accessory, propaganda, know very well that the electoral fatigue showed on Tuesday, July 31, is a million mile away from the output of the current government. And the reason is this.

Firstly, naturally, fatigue or tiredness to overcome distractions and getting something done, however meaningful, is given to human effort. This is compounded by politics, and more so Liberian politics, which is notoriously selfish. The phenomenon of voter apathy is not unique to Liberia. Universally, the only proven medicine for voter apathy is electoral momentum. Electoral momentum is not a product of political success. In other words, high voter turnout does not come about because a political authority was or is successful in meeting its goals. In fact, conversely, there is bound to be high voter turnout when the regime that is the incumbent has many failures for which the electorate rises up to effect a change because of the failures. Perhaps that’s why the clamor to vote or the voter turnout of 2017 was relatively high in the 2017 elections. Electoral momentum dies when the stakes in politics are low, and the stakeholders who are the contestants fail to raise the stakes. It’s the contestants and the issues at stake that ignite electoral momentum. It is competitive elections that emit high electoral momentum. Where there are no contentious issues and where the contestants don’t excite and mobilize the electorate, voter turnout is bound to go low, and not necessarily because the sitting authority, whether old as Methuselah or young as a day newborn, failed to meet some amount of public expectations. It was clear sufficiently in the Tuesday by-elections that the contestants did little or nothing to mobilize and excite the electorate in finding a reason to leave their chores, walk to polling places and to cast a vote.

If Liberians were so angry and they wanted to strike at the George Weah government for failure as perceived and propagated by some argues, they would turn out en masse to vote. Liberians are good at unleashing their anger at incumbent regimes for failure. They don’t vent their anger by cowering at home and staying away from the ballot box. Thus, no one should lie on the people or twist their reasons for not voting Tuesday. Staying out from the senatorial by-elections is because of something else other than the so-called “signs of bigger things to come” as perceived by others. Ask the former ruling Unity Party or the former ruling National Democratic Party of Liberia (NDPL) or 34 former senators in the 2014 elections if you doubt what Liberian voters can do when they are angry with politicians. They don’t stay home. They vote.

Secondly, too many potential voters could not vote because they found themselves in the “voter trafficking” situations created by the 2017 voter registration quagmire. Throngs of people were lifted to distant communities or constituencies in Monsterrado County to register and to vote. This was the case in Bong County and all other counties. Without the transportation support and other enticements that caused their displaced registration in the 2017 election, it was obvious that these “trafficked” voters would not be inclined to pay their own fares to travel to places they had registered. Some pundits say five out of every ten voters were “trafficked”. I know this for sure because one or two persons close to me fell in this category and did not vote on Tuesday despite encouragement provided. And, clearly, this case is emblematic of the larger situation which accounts for the low turnout.

Thirdly, the 2017 elections were too stressful, meandering and energy-exhausting for so many Liberians to get re-excited for a senatorial by-election barely in six months. Voter fatigue already being pervasive, if not deeply treasured in the DNA of many ordinary Liberians, a senatorial by-election a stone-throw away from the winding 2017 national elections would understandably face a near boycott. Liberians who normally see politicians and politics as the “people’s thing” would save themselves some energy and the tension that come with serial elections, even if skyscrapers and superhighways were built in six months. This would come certainly particularly where the contestants had left all to chance, failing to mobilize and excite an already tired electorate to come out to vote for them.

I am hearing some folks attributing the low turnout to the failure of the 6-month government to bring manna down from heaven. Whatever the empirical basis for this, who says they don’t have the right to their version of hypothesis? After all, this line of conclusion—that voters refused to vote because the current government failed to develop Liberia to expectation [in five months]—is the easiest postulation to proffer. Anyone can say it, and it is this that many weak minds can easily grasp. What is not easy to say and understand because of the politics of the day is that there was low turnout because the contestants failed to create the necessary momentum, failing to reach out deeply and noisily to the electorate; that countless others struggled unsuccessfully to overcome their “trafficked” status, and that naturally many potential voters felt so stretched out from the uproarious 2017 elections. Thus, low voter turn was to be expected, and it’s totally not because of the inherited broken system being fixed.

What is historically clear is that Liberians don’t shy away from demonstrating their anger against incumbent politicians who failed. They confront them. They uproot them. Not by lamenting. Not by staying away from the ballot box. But they do so visibly by coming out in their droves despite prevailing socioeconomic and political crises to vote. If they were so angry with a five-month-old government they would also come out to vote. They wouldn’t have stayed home. That’s not Liberian electorates’ nature.