Increasing local participation in elections and in the “process” as a whole has been an uphill battle over the last 20 years, due mainly to lack of interest of the voting population. Battles have waged over why that is the case Рranging from bad/dirty politics to disillusionment with politicians/system Рwith many others in between.

Low voter turnout to regular elections has remained the standard and can only be helped by local interest groups (whether you agree with their politics or not). It becomes harder for these groups when they look to the local party leadership, only days away from their Ward caucuses, and find data that hasn’t been updated and missing locations/times for these caucuses on their web site.

Hey don’t get us wrong, we know where to go and when – but how about letting everyone else know? If you can’t mail every Democrat in each ward, how about asking the local papers to print the information? How about updating the web site?

Is it any surprise when you go one of these ward caucuses and it is jammed to the gills with only two groups facing off? Would it surprise you go to another ward and there aren’t even enough people present to be elected to serve as delegates? Anyone think about the regular folk – not the ‚Äúus‚Äù and ‚Äúthem‚Äù people – those people lucky enough to actually know in advance where to go – who come once, watch the antics and then never come back or better yet, switch to Independent?

It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out that if you can’t reach the masses, then you can’t be effective. We don’t want to speculate on who exactly is in charge of getting the message out citywide from the Somerville Democratic City Committee, but that person (or persons) REALLY should take a few minutes and get with it in 2008 – or stop bitching and moaning when it comes to low voter participation – or better still – do the party a favor and step down and let people who know what they’re doing get the job done right.