It's Primary Election Day! Yawn.

It’s Election Day in the Lehigh Valley and voters are apparently staying away in droves. By 1 p.m., according to other media, turnout across Lehigh and Northampton counties was light, to be polite. In “news-speak,” that translates into “deader than Osama bin Laden.”

In my younger days I worked the polls at a couple of different locations, for a couple of decades I covered elections at all levels and in more recent years I have stood outside for various candidates. I can tell you there is no torture worse than a quiet election. They should force inmates at Guantanamo to man the polls on days like this. They’ll start singing like canaries by lunch. The minutes tick by like days. You arrive at a polling place early; three hours later you look at your watch and realize only 30 minutes have passed. It’s not very heartening for the candidates, either, who are looking desperately for a hand to shake or a donation to accept or a vote to swing.

Truth be told, there just isn’t a lot of excitement on the ballot this year. There aren’t many primary challenges, outside of the and the “Keep or Sell Gracedale” referendum in Northampton County. The sad fact is that, in many municipalities, it’s hard just to get people to run for office. There aren’t even enough candidates in Salisbury Township to fill all of the so the incoming board will have to appoint someone in January.

But another truth is that these local elections are really the most important in the four-year cycle that culminates with the presidential selections. The people who are nominated today and elected in November will make decisions that will affect you far more than whatever Charlie Dent, Bob Casey or Barack Obama do. They will set your school and municipal property tax rates. They will decide what classes get cut from the school calendar. They have the veto power over what you do with your property, or what can be built next door.

The American public has some skewed priorities when it comes to voting (among many things). We will attend rallies to support the right to vote in Third World countries. We will send our sons and daughters off to war to create democratic governments in other nations. But we won’t take 10 minutes out of our day to help decide who will govern us. Then we complain about the government we get.

Go figure.