ON Valentine's Day this year, Oklahoma City voters will decide who they want to lead the Oklahoma City school board, and choose two other individual members of that board along with the representatives of four city council wards.

More accurately, a small sliver of voters is likely to make these important choices. Unfortunately, turnout is generally quite low for municipal and school board elections, despite candidates' efforts to get people to vote.

For example in February of last year, Carrie Coppernoll Jacobs won election to the District 3 school board seat by securing 283 votes. Her opponent received 242. That's 525 votes cast from among 13,400 registered voters in those 18 precincts — a paltry 4 percent turnout. Yet that's about the same percentage of voters who decided the 2013 winner of another Oklahoma City school board seat.

And chances are the majority of voters in each of those races was older and white. The demographic details in a recent SoonerPoll.com survey that focused on a potential special election underscore this point.