In yesterday’s New Orleans elections, the big winner was apathy. Approximately two-thirds of the registered voters in the city declared their lack of interest. Of the approximate one-third who made the effort to go to the polls, approximately two-thirds indicated that they were happy with the status quo in New Orleans. See the results here. Sadly, that is just slightly less than the number that voted in the last mayoral race in New Orleans over four years ago.

Very likely more people attended the French Quarter Festival yesterday than voted at the polling places.

The real question to be raised from yesterday’s primary is not who will win the run-offs. That is already clear — the status quo - incumbents. Those who are politically-correct and who will not “rock the boat” are the desire of those who voted. The only question left unanswered (because of the silent two-thirds) is why so few people voted.

We will hear that because the voters were disenfranchised because of the lack of satellite polling places around the country wherever one of more refugees hangs his hat. We will hear that we were able to provide polling places for Iraqi citizens living in the U.S., but not New Orleans citizens living in the U.S. The great flaw in that argument is that the Iraqis wanted to vote and drove hundreds of miles in some cases to cast their vote.

I am going out on a long, politically-incorrect limb and declare that the reason most didn’t vote is because, they either don’t care or don’t believe that their vote makes a difference. There was certainly enough diversity in the candidates for mayor and many other offices that even the pickiest of us so-called (by the supporters of the status quo) cynics were able to find someone to suit our philosophy.

While we have a constitutional right to vote in the U.S.; we also have a responsibility to vote. Those that failed to vote were not disenfranchised, they simply failed to show up for their job as American citizens.

We hear that the President, Congress and the rest of the country has written New Orleans off. Why shouldn’t they. Two-thirds of her own citizens have written New Orleans off.

It is said that doing the same thing over and over, but expecting different results is insanity. Nuff said!

C.B.