Roger Rabbits with Jim Bunny

It was a ‘what-the-hell?’ moment – a queue at the DX Mailbox in the Cherrywood shopping centre.

A queue of four dusty old grey heads, but still a queue, and at 1.30pm on a Saturday afternoon.

What was to get overly excited about at 1.30pm on Saturday afternoon by a blue mailbox? What was the urgent need to get something in the post right then and there? Or was it to be the first ever senior citizens ram raid on a post box?

Then a late model Kia screeches to a halt. The door’s flung open and a woman’s brandishing an orange envelope. “I trust you have seriously considered your choices,” she says to our DX queue of four. She swelled it to five.

“We don’t want or need any more of the malarkey we endured four years ago,” she warned.

“So no numpties.” With that, her orange envelope was posted, and I presume, a vote for a new broom through the council chamber. And no numpties.

Locked and loaded 

Then with fist clenched, index finger locked and loaded and a captive audience of four, she fired her parting shot. “Remember a vote is one thing. The consequences of that vote is another. Think smart, think strategically.” And with that the electoral crusader was gone.

Perhaps that’s over-dramatising what happened, but it should work well for the movie version of this story.

And a whole week out from election day, this town was pumping. We sensed we were on the brink of something quite important, a watershed moment in Tauranga.

If this bit of street theatre was anything to go by, the first council election in four years was going to be a humdinger. Fevered voters would be beating a path to the ballot box.

Remember the outcries before the election? “Power back to the council” and “Tauranga demands democracy” and “We want control”.

Remember “Commissioners be gone”? Or similar feelings. The message being that commissioners appointed by the Government to do the job of a dysfunctional council were now past their use-by date and we wanted democracy back.

So what happened last Saturday when we were given one of the great privileges of the free world, the right to vote? To have our one true say on the future of the city, who runs it and in what direction?

Tsunami of nothingness 

What happened was a great tsunami of nothingness. We abrogated. We failed ourselves. Great swathes of the city disenfranchised themselves, could not be bothered exercising their right to vote.

Remember the outcry at the suggestion of a hybrid council made up of commissioners and elected representatives? We demanded a fully elected council. And then we stay away from the ballot box in droves.

One might be forgiven for wondering if we deserve democracy? This is what our forefathers went to war and died for – to protect our freedoms and privileges like the right to vote.

And in some countries people still die in the streets while fighting for that right, to have a say over who occupies the offices of power. But here in Tauranga many of us, most of us in fact, can’t be bothered ticking a few boxes.

Just didn’t bother 

People say they care, but have demonstrated they don’t.

All the publicity beforehand was telling us this council election was a pivotal time for the city. Seems not! And the staggeringly low voting numbers support that notion.

There were 109,364 eligible voters in Tauranga City last weekend. But just 41,427 (plus special votes), or just 37.88per cent (with special votes 38.7 per cent) of them cast their ballot.

That means about 68,000 eligible residents didn’t bother to vote. This is about eight times the population of Otūmoetai, about twice the population of Pāpāmoa. And the big question is, what would the council have looked like had everyone exercised their right?

So why didn’t they? Here’s some less-than-scientific research.

Excuse #1: “The voting papers are still sitting on the dining room table.” Cue apologetic laughter. “I didn’t get around to reading all the stuff up. Didn’t have time.”

Excuse #2: “I forgot. One vote won’t make a difference.”

Excuse #3: “I think I threw the voting forms out.

Excuse #4: “Who cares?”

Don’t bend my ear 

I suppose I care. I don’t mean to sound sanctimonious, but I was a tad aggrieved about what happened to our last duly elected council. It was an embarrassment.

So I laboured over my options to ensure history didn’t repeat itself. Ticked one box one night, scratched it out the next, then ticked it again the third night. What a responsibility.

But what I won’t be doing for the next four years is indulging every complaint about bus stops, or the lack of them, traffic congestion or rates, or living seawalls, or new civic precincts and art galleries and museums, or the wonderful Māori adornments down Cameron Rd.

First, I will be asking whether you voted. Did you have your say when it counted rather than needlessly and futilely bending my ear for the next 10 minutes?