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Show M&imES(XTt by SeratorOrrin Hatch During the darkest days of Watergate popular bump-erstlckers bump-erstlckers plastered everywhere every-where said; "don't blame me. I voted for McGovern." Similar messages bemoaned the high-spending "Great-Society" "Great-Society" congresses of the 1960s: "Don't blame me. I voted Republican." If conditions ever worsen during the next few years in many of Utah's cities and towns, over 80 percent of those communities' voters won't have that excuse. They didn't vote. Less than 20 percent of Utah's voters turned out for the Oct. 6 primary elections held in cities all across the . state. Less than one in five. That means primary winners, win-ners, if they won by a bare majority, were chosen by roughly 10 percent of their constituency. Of course, primary elections elec-tions never draw the voters a general election does, especially es-pecially in an off-year with no statewide or national races and few controversial issues on the ballot. Which is not to say they shouldn't especially this year. City officials who are elected on Nov. 3 will assume great responsbility as Pres -ident Reagan's "new federalism" fed-eralism" policies turn more and more power over to local governments. One such policy allows federal funds, which were granted for years with numerous stipulations as to how they could be spent to be now dispersed in blocks with most of the conditions of their dispersal set by local officials. Deciding how to get citizen cit-izen input as he and other local officials decide how to disperse these federal block grants has been one of the recent tasks of Richfield Mayor Kendrick Harwood. Mayor Harwood has noticed less federal bureaucratic control since President Reagan Rea-gan took office, and he expects ex-pects city jobs to "become level. In city elections, com -' mon civic excuses like, "It won't make any difference who's elected," or "Why should I bother? It's only one vote," lose all credibility. credi-bility. Consider Tooele's primary. pri-mary. When the ballots were originally counted, mayoral candidates Oren Probert and Randy Hammond emerged as finalists, due to Hammond's four -vote margin over Thomas Atkin. During a recount, re-count, however, Atkin moved from four votes behind Ham -mond to even, and then to two ahead. Although Hammond Is challenging Mie outcome of the recount and the matter is currently in court, It's obvious that only a handful i.e. four votes made a difference dif-ference in an election where almost 3,000 people voted. Two changed votes could, have decided the future mayor of Tooele. Whoever ends up as mayor there and in city halls all "across the state will have more power and control over federal funds than they ever had before. Sixty-four percent per-cent of the American people say that that's the way America should be governed, close to home, according to last week's Gallup poll. In my support of an discussions about the new federalism, I've discovered that probably a higher percentage of . Utahns feel that way, too. I only hope our voting percentage proves in on November 3rd more demanding" as that control continues to shift to local governments and local officials have to, deal directly with those grants. That points up the real significance of local elections elec-tions that otherwise might seem lack-luster at times. "All the thumping and fanfare fan-fare doesn't take place in city campaigns; often you have neighbor running a-gainst a-gainst neighbor," Mayor Harwood said. "But city elections are Important." The victors In those elections elec-tions help set property taxes and sales taxes, he continued as well as deciding on the kinds of things that immediately imme-diately impact most Americans: Ameri-cans: sldewaTks, street improvement, im-provement, parks-- and Richfield's proposed year-round year-round swimming pool. All the decisions concerning concern-ing those things are made, in the final analysis, by those who vote in city elections. A voter's decision -making power is never more concentrated concen-trated than it is on the local |