Remember the Seinfeld episode where Jerry convinces cafe owner Babu Bhatt to change it to a Pakistani restaurant? Alas, Jerry was a better comedy writer than businessman, leading an angry Babu to yell at Jerry in an empty restaurant;

“You make me change restaurant, but nobody come! You say, make Pakistani, Babu Bhatt have only Pakistani restaurant. But where are people? You see people? Show me people! There ARE no people!”

Substitute “make voting easier” for Pakistani restaurant, and a similar rant is going to sum up this year’s Lowell municipal election.

No matter who I talk to, they predict a low turnout when all the votes are tallied tomorrow, lower than the 12,145 who turned out in 2021, the first Lowell election under District Representation. I’ve even heard as low as 9,500.

Well, I’m here to tell you we’re going to submarine even the lowest of those projections.

Think I’m exaggerating for effect? Let’s try a simple math exercise.

A couple of weeks ago, we posted an article about the slow pace or in-person early and mail-in voting, comparing them to the 2021 city election and 2022 state election.

In the 2021 city election, early and mail in voting combined for 59.8% of the total ballots cast in the city of Lowell, or about 7,260 votes.

In the 2022 state primary, 50.2% of Lowell ballots were cast early or by mail. By November’s general election, that number had slid down to 44.8%

See a pattern? 59.8, 50.2, 44.8.

Now, much of that drop off can be attributed to Covid appearing smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror. But what has unfolded in 2023 is another matter entirely.

As of 5pm today, election eve, 575-people made the trek to City Hall to vote early, while 683 had already submitted mail ballots.

In all, 717 people requested mail/absentee ballots. For the purpose of this exercise, let’s assume the 34 who’ve yet to return their ballots by mail do so by the deadline tomorrow night.

That means a “whopping” 1,292 people will have partaken in the opportunity to avoid getting caught in those “massive” election day waiting lines.

So let’s say that early and mail voting percentage equals Lowell’s 44.8% rate in the 2022 election. That means you’ll have a turnout of about 2,850.

Now, even I’ll acknowledge that the number of early and mail ballots will continue to plunge at an even faster rate than between 2021-2022. But as Chubby Checker asks in Limbo Rock, “how low can you go?”

Let’s drop the bar real low, shall we, and say 25% of the ballots cast in this election cycle will come before Election Day. Well, that means a total turnout of about 5,150.

Go lower you say? Sure, let’s drop that number down to 20% of the total coming via early/mail. That makes your turnout about 6,500. 15%=8,600.

See where I’m going with this now?

We’re either going to definitively be able to say that early and mail-in voting in municipal elections is a waste of time and money, or we’re in for an embarrassingly low turnout just two years after we changed the form of government to increase “engagement.” (I might make the argument both are true)

Oh, and for the record, the automatic voter registration at the RMV has increased the number of registered voters in the city as of today to 75,289. That’s 7,422 more than were on the voter rolls when we got excited about the nearly 18% overall turnout in 2021. I’ll spare you that math, but rest assured, we’re not coming anywhere near the turnout figure from two years ago.

So get out and vote tomorrow. Or don’t. I’m pretty sure either way Babu Bhatt would be waving a disapproving finger in your face and asking;

“Lowell, where are the people?”