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Did LGBT Voter Apathy Contribute to Michelle Bruce’s Election Defeat?

The votes are in, and we know the score: Michelle Bruce 1, Ignorance 0, Indifference 2. Transgender Riverdale, Georgia City Councilwoman Michelle Bruce lost her re-election run-off yesterday, one day after a Clayton County Superior Court Judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by two of her opponents in the general election. Losing candidates Stanley Harris and Georgia Fuller filed the suit in an attempt to delay yesterday’s runoff and void the November 6 city election based on their claim that Bruce misled candidates by running as a woman. Michelle Bruce 1, Ignorance 0. The former candidates filed an immediate appeal.

At the polls yesterday, Bruce lost by 85 votes to Wayne Hall, 308 to 223, according to the Associated Press. A check of the Georgia Secretary of State’s Website shows that there are 6,124 registered voters in the City of Riverdale as of November 1, 2007, but only 531 voted. For the sake of argument, let’s assume the rule-of-thumb applies and that about 10 percent of Riverdale’s population is queer. Even I can do that math–that’s about 612 voters. To take that one equation further, even if all 223 of the Riverdale voters who cast their ballots for Bruce were LGB or T, that means another 389 didn’t vote at all or didn’t vote for Bruce. Not to suggest that all GLBT voters are or should be single-issue voters, it’s still disappointing that so many didn’t even bother to vote at all. Engaged in LGBT politics or not, it would seem that a full-frontal attack on someone in our community would manage to motivate another 86 people to get to the polls. That’s all it would have taken for Bruce to win. In fact Bruce did win the most votes (312) in the general election, just no enough to avoid the runoff. Less than 100 additional votes would have avoided the run-off altogether.

My hypothetical equation doesn’t even factor in tolerant straight voters. Participation by an even smaller percentage of queer-friendly heterosexual voters would have also changed this game. It seems clear that the majority of all voters–queer and straight–don’t see LGBT rights and acceptance as important enough to get out and vote. The score on that one: Michelle Bruce 0, Indifference 2.