According to a survey conducted by Aaron Campbell, a marketing and campaign consultant in Utah county, a large number of Mormon apostles vote, even in years when there is no presidential election. Campbell considered the voting patterns of the Mormon leadership of Orem, Utah and found that 100% of LDS stake presidents were registered voters. Peggy Fletcher Stack of the Salt Lake Tribune explains:
Of 21 Orem LDS stake presidents, 100 percent are registered voters, and all of them voted in 2008, the year Barack Obama was elected president. In the off-years of 2009 and 2011, these stake presidents voted 52 percent and 38 percent, respectively. In 2010, however, the year Sen. Bob Bennett was defeated by Mike Lee at the Republican Convention, 95 percent of them voted in the general election.
In the same time periods, 88 percent of 180 Orem bishops were registered voters, Campbell discovered, and 95 percent of them voted in 2008. Only 41 percent of the registered voter bishops voted in 2009, 85 percent in 2010, and 47 percent in 2011.
In 2011, 87 percent of the whole Orem population was registered, but only 16 percent voted. That means local elections were decided by fewer than 10 percent of the eligible voters, Campbell noted. “That leaves a lot of power in the hands of a few.”
Between 2004 and 2008, voter turnout took a dramatic turn downward. In 2004, Campbell said, the total voter population turnout was 67 percent, the 11th highest in the country; four years later it was 49 percent, the second lowest in the nation after Hawaii. In 2010, a non-presidential year, it was 38 percent, third lowest in the country.
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