David DeCamp, Times Staff Writer
Monday, November 2, 2009

Bill Foster waves along Fourth Street and 38th Avenue N in St. Petersburg.?

ST. PETERSBURG — A small share of voters will decide today who should be the city's next mayor, Kathleen Ford or Bill Foster.

Emphasis on small.

Modest turnout is expected as a result of scheduling an election in an off year from major national or state races. It has been that way for decades in St. Petersburg and most cities.

Mail ballot returns suggest St. Petersburg is only slightly ahead of the 23 percent turnout in the Sept. 1 primary. The city has 156,478 registered voters, or roughly 60 percent of the city's population.

Even Supervisor of Elections Deborah Clark chuckles lightly at the notion that poll workers should probably bring a good book with them to pass time at the polls today.

"The American voter is lazy," said City Council member Herb Polson, who won office in 2007 amid the lowest turnout in city history at 9.8 percent.

Turnout likely would increase if the city synched its elections with state and national voting dates, Clark said. It also would save money.

Today's election will cost St. Petersburg $300,000.

If the city held the election with the countywide races in 2010, the cost would have ranged from $19,000 to $76,000, depending on the ballot size, according to the county elections office.

Why the separation in the first place?

The city started having elections in off years because of reforms begun a century ago.

Eager to rid local elections of greasy machine politics, cities made the elections non-partisan and scheduled them for years when national campaigns wouldn't run at the same time, said retired University of South Florida professor Darryl Paulson, who follows city politics. The practice started in the 1930s, according to newspaper accounts.

Without the star power of big-name candidates or the horsepower of political parties, however, most St. Petersburg elections have ended with turnouts between 20 and 40 percent in recent decades.