My Take On The Primary In Allentown

Democracy By Default

Here's the short & Long of it. Nobody Gives A Rat's Ass

In fact I question myself as to why I'm even bothering to post on this matter.

Despite all the numerous threats at council meetings to vote incumbent council members out of office over one issue after another, voters voted 4 of the 5 incumbents right back into office.


I can't help but wonder how many council members will take these threats seriously ever again at future council meetings. But that's not the big story.












The big story is over 97% of the population in
Allentown didn't even bother to show up at the polls!

(Even among registered voters this was the poorest turnout over the last three primaries in Allentown)

It is any wonder why the Morning Call, Express-Times or WFMZ-TV aren't spending their resources on investigative reporting when it comes to Allentown City Hall? Why should they knowing that less then 3% of Allentown's citizens give a crap enough to vote? That's not exactly a subscriber based business growth model they can build on.

According to the 2010 census Allentown has a population of 118,032 people. Julio Guridy, who had the highest number of votes for city council, only received 1,604. This represents only 1.36% of the total number of people living in Allentown. Even the mayor, who had the highest number of votes recorded, only represents less then 2.2% of the population. To my dismay, it turns out he received the most number of votes right in my own Ward's district.

People can holler and scream and petition till their heart's content, but what matters is what they do about it come election time. Now we know... NOTHING!


For all the election results in Lehigh County CLICK HERE

I'll wrap this up with one more thing that's on my mind. It's 100% speculation on my part and I've not heard anything about this what-so-ever. Just suppose this administration finds a need to use 7th street to feed traffic into and out the new arena and decides to convert 7th to two way. Further suppose parking is eliminated on one or both sides of the street to accommodate that volume of traffic. Imagine the outrage from the Hispanic community who set up their shops along this corridor if they should then lose parking for their customers. I'm not saying this is going to happen, but it is a possibility with all this gentrification and every thing going on. I'm certain not a peep would be heard before these elections if these were plans in the back of their minds.

My response, if this should occur is, where the hell were you folks on election day! Why I should get behind and rally support when most could care less about voting? And remember, if this should happen.. you heard it here first. Even though this is 100% pure speculation on my part, don't be stunned if this should come to pass. Also don't be too disappointed if I don't share in some future faux outrage over this or some other drama that's sure to come along.

I don't think I'm sounding too curmudgeon when I state, elections have consequences. One of the worse is when less then 3,000 electors and a handful of political leaders decide for the other 115,000 people who were too apathetic to get off their lazy asses. It's not only shame on Allentown regarding democracy, but it's downright embarrassing especially for those citizens who stood up on certain issues only to realize that less then 3% of their fellow citizens could give a crap either way, whether 'for' or 'against' something.