Ulster County Board of Elections Commissioner Tom Turco has a simple message for the residents of Ellenville and Wawarsing: Get out there and vote in next Tuesday's elections.

Turco stresses the importance of folks to make their voices heard during local elections, and that, contrary to conventional wisdom, local elections hold greater influence for citizens than a gubernatorial or even presidential election.

"For legislation being passed at the local level, the impact is immediate," says Turco. "When your town board puts a referendum up, passes a resolution, passes a budget, or when your village trustees and the mayor put legislation on the table, it happens within a very short period of time, and there's a direct impact. At the state level, there's more likely to be a delay. By the time the process finishes, the delay could be years. When you deal at a local level, you've got five people on your board…those five people pass legislation. It usually takes effect within a very short period of time. The impact is immediate as opposed to delayed because on a larger scale, there's just more hands in the soup, so to speak."

Regarding the Ellenville/Wawarsing area specifically, Turco points to the fact that this is the first year that the village and the town are holding elections at the same time, on the day of the general election. Previously, the village election was held earlier in March, but it was moved to November 6 to help keep costs down by eliminating the extra, earlier election day, as well as to improve voter turnout.

"When we talk about voter turnout — and these are just average numbers — and history has proved this out — in a presidential year, you can get anywhere from 70-80% turnout," reports Turco.

"In a governor's year, it's anywhere from 60-70%. And then on a local year, like this year, we usually average about 50%-55%. So you can see the drop-off there. If we can get people more interested in our local races, I think it benefits the communities," Turco adds.

Very recent Ulster County election history points to the importance of every vote. Just last year, Marbletown's vote to pass legislation for Working Farmland Tax Credit won by only seven votes; in Gardiner, the same legislation was passed by the even slimmer margin of one vote.

Four years ago, in the Town of Ulster, Democrat Brian Cahill lost his campaign for a seat on the town council to the incumbent, Republican Joel Brink, by a single vote. And, even more telling, these slim margins in local elections have been a part of our area's history: the New York Times published a story on November 18, 1903 about another Republican named Joel Brink from a century ago who lost the election, this time for town supervisor, by one vote, spurring him to charge his opponent, incumbent Henry McNamee, with cheating.

1903's Joel Brink alleged, "that dead men were voted, that ballots disappeared, and that the tally sheet was tampered with to elect his opponent." Clearly, if Ulster County can't learn the lesson of close races in the past, what hope do our local governments have for the future?

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