Looking at Tuesday’s election results, Susan B. Anthony would have been proud. For Frederick Douglass, another American icon with deep Rochester roots, not so much.
Again, the democratic process worked, but not as well as it should. Of 423,833 registered voters in Monroe County, a paltry 32.5 percent bothered to cast their ballots. In the city, just 25 percent of its 92,000 registered voters went to the polls.
Such a dismal showing, no doubt, would have been particularly disturbing for Douglass. The city is where the largest percentage of people of color live and it’s where problems linked to poverty and economic status are greatest.
Douglass, remember, fought hard for issues of social and economic equity on behalf of black people, many of whom were enslaved during his lifetime.
Voting also was seen as the pathway to freedom during the modern civil rights era. Because that’s so, mayoral control in the city was strongly opposed last year, yet just 22,000 city residents bothered to vote in this year’s school board and City Council races.
As for Anthony, who fought for women’s voting rights, she’d surely be thrilled that for the first time in county history, a woman was elected district attorney. Sandra Doorley, behind Monroe County Executive Maggie Brooks, who was re-elected to an unprecedented third term, will become the second highest ranking woman in county government. The county clerk’s job is held by Cheryl Dinolfo, who was not up for re-election.
There’s much in Tuesday’s election results for all to celebrate. But there’s no denying that there’s also much to grieve.
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