By David Vitrano

L’Observateur

LAPLACE – Special elections were held in both St. John the Baptist Parish and St. James Parish on Saturday, April 2, and voter turnout on the day was estimated at about 10 percent for each parish. The low turnout was expected and is not unusual for such an election.

But the first step to alleviating the problems associated with low turnout is to find out why people did not vote, so L’Observateur asked visitors to its website whether or not they had voted, and if they had not voted, why not.

Voter apathy seems to be one of the bigger reasons behind the low turnout as while more than 30 percent of respondents said they voted in the April 2 contests, an equal number said they did not vote because they did not care about the election.

Of the remaining respondents who said they did not vote, more than half said they did not know about the election. The others said they were not in town for the elections, did not know where to vote or had another reason for not voting Saturday.

A full breakdown of results follows:

• 31 percent of respondents chose “I voted.”

• 20 percent of respondents chose “I did not vote because I did not know about the election.”

• 7 percent of respondents chose “I did not vote because I was out of town/not near my polling location.”

• 3 percent of respondents chose “I did not vote because I do not know where my polling location is.”

• 31 percent of respondents chose “I did not vote because I did not care about this election.”

• 8 percent of respondents chose “None of the above/ other.”