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Nowhere else in Ontario did eligible voters take a bigger disinterest in last week’s provincial election than in Windsor.

Of 124 ridings in the June 7 voting, Windsor-West and Windsor-Tecumseh had the distinction of having the two worst voter turnout rates, according to Elections Ontario. Not only that, but those two local ridings are among only four ridings where more than half the eligible voters didn’t even bother to cast ballots.

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Windsor-Tecumseh, where the NDP’s Percy Hatfield repeated as winner, had the second-worst voter turnout in Ontario at 48.2 per cent. In Windsor West, where the NDP’s Lisa Gretzky also won reelection, the turnout was even lower at 43.8 per cent.

“Wow,” University of Windsor political scientist Lydia Miljan said when learning about the lack of local voter interest.

A self-described “political junkie” who describes voting as an “obligation of citizenship,” Miljan said there could be any number of factors as to why voters don’t vote, including a perception that their participation won’t make any difference in the election’s outcome. But Windsor isn’t the only place in Ontario with partisan strongholds, and the provincial voter turnout was 58 per cent, a nearly 20-year high and a big jump from 51 per cent in 2014.