Becker, Gregory, Weldon win Assembly seats<\/a><\/p>\n
More than one third of all registered Juneau voters cast a ballot in this year\u2019s municipal election. That marks an improvement over last year\u2019s turnout, but there is still plenty of room to improve.<\/p>\n
Of Juneau\u2019s 25,100 registered voters, 8,413 cast ballots in the city election, marking a voter turnout of 33.5 percent.<\/p>\n
\u201cThirty-four percent is a good number for us, but gosh what does that say? We can\u2019t stop there,\u201d said Juneau Libraries Director Robert Barr. \u201cWe need more people engaged in our local democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n
For the past couple years, Barr has been working to make that happen. He helped start Juneau Votes \u2014 a non-partisan collaborative voter-engagement group \u2014 in 2014 after municipal election turnout bottomed out at about 19 percent in 2013.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s difficult to say what role specific civic groups like Juneau Votes and the League of Women Voters have played in increasing city election turnout, but it\u2019s clear that their collective impact is starting to move the needle in the right direction \u2014 albeit slowly.<\/p>\n
After voter turnout dipped from nearly 30 percent in 2014 to about 24 percent last year, turnout has been climbing. In March\u2019s special mayoral election, 33.4 percent of Juneau voters turned out to elect Mayor Ken Koelsch.<\/p>\n