Dallas, we have a problem and we're running out of time to fix it. We don't vote. I mean, we really don't vote.

I know you're probably thinking, if that's the case what's with all the hoopla associated with the November elections spilling out of every other mailbox, television screen and cellphone? Well, come May it'll be a different story.

That's when Dallas picks our next mayor and the city council. I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings, but most of you are going to be sitting that one out.

When it comes to voting for mayor, we take a pass. As a result, we'll be leaving it to a tiny fraction of eligible voters to cast the votes that will set Dallas' direction for years to come. Last time around, only 6 percent of us voted, the worst turnout of any of America's 30 largest cities.

There are many reasons why that's a bad deal. Voting is a gateway to civic engagement. The more likely one is to vote, the more likely he or she is to do all kinds of things that make a city hum, like volunteering, and taking part in cultural events. Studies prove that, says professor Robert Stein, faculty director of Rice University Center for Civic Leadership in Houston.

Some studies have even suggested that voting makes citizens healthier, and not just because they can influence health policy. Voting itself, as proof of civic engagement, boosts one's health, according to researchers at the University of Wisconsin.

More than that, even, a city that relies on only a tiny fraction of its residents to vote leaves our leaders operating on such pencil-thin support it's a wonder they are able to be effective at all.

Take Mayor Mike Rawlings. He was elected for his second term in 2015 on a huge margin, but with just a bit over 30,000 votes. That's in America's ninth-largest city, anchor to the fourth-largest urban area in the nation.

That's ridiculous. A second term for 30,000 votes and change? What happened to hundreds of thousands of eligible voters?

James Steinberg/Special contributor

Voting (or not voting) is a habit

Turns out, voting is a habit. So is not voting. The more you don't vote, the less likely you are to vote next time. Researchers have shown that too, Stein said.

Guess who else knows it? Candidates.

Candidates talk about getting out the vote all the time, but what they mean most often is getting out their voters. And when money and time get tight — as they always do — candidates focus on likely voters, especially those they suspect will likely vote for them. That is, they spend time and money wooing people who have voted before.

Vast numbers of people are bad investments for candidates seeking to focus their attention. You might be thinking, "Lucky them! They don't get the door knocks and dinnertime calls that annoy regular voters."

Fair enough, but it's that annoying contact that helps remind voters about an upcoming election. Folks who are never asked to vote are the least likely to turn up at the polls.

That's especially true in Dallas, where voting is not just rare, it's also highly concentrated in what researchers have called voting oases — places that vote unusually often. We have a lot of those, but we also have nearly innumerable voting deserts, where turnout can be lower than 1 percent.

Smart candidates know that spending their money on voters in the deserts is not nearly as effective as working over the oases. So, our city, which is already deeply segregated by race and income, is also segregated by how much attention candidates pay to some citizens and not others.

"Take a candidate in Dallas," said Phil Keisling, director of the Center for Public Service at Portland State University in Oregon, where he served as elected secretary of state from 1991 to 1998. "If they walk into a community center and see in one corner 15 or 20 young people, ages 18 to 34, and in another a single senior citizen, who are they going to go talk to? If they are thinking rationally, they're going to go talk to the senior citizen."

That's because seniors in Dallas are that much more likely to be voters than younger people.

Stein, the Rice professor, says it's no surprise younger voters stay home. Too few people ask them to vote — not even the candidates.

"Candidates know who is likely to vote, and more precisely, who they think is going to vote for them. They aren't talking about or even to anyone else," Stein said.

Maybe that's part of the remedy Dallas needs so badly. We've got to find ways to incentivize candidates to spend time with unlikely voters, especially young people. I'll start by simply asking candidates to do so; this is me asking.

James Steinberg/Special contributor

Other barriers, other solutions

Candidate contact could boost the desire among eligible voters to vote. And we ought to make it easier for them to vote, too. Keisling has an idea for how we can do that.

First, he said voting turnout in some communities spiked after they moved the municipal elections held in off years to the same day voters decide on the higher-profile races, like the midterm national elections or even presidential years.

There's a certain kind of smarts to that. After all, voting in Dallas during the 2016 presidential election was much higher than it was the year before for the mayoral contest. Why not piggyback on the greater enthusiasm in a presidential year, or on the kind of excitement we're seeing around this year's midterms?

However, Keisling and others caution that crowding more races on a single ballot could also overwhelm voters. Faced with too many races to keep track of, the chance they won't finish the ballot only gets bigger. Stein notes that's part of what researchers call the roll-off effect.

But they both say there's another way to make structural changes in our voting system in Dallas that could boost turnout.

We should make it super easy to vote, they say, by allowing voting from home. That sounds like a bold idea but it's not really so radical. Texas already allows seniors, the disabled, and incarcerated people who are eligible to vote to cast absentee ballots. Why not extend that to everyone?

Keisling says keeping the mayoral election in the off year but allowing voting at home has boosted voter turnout by three times in some places where they've tried it. Already, Oregon, Washington and Colorado allow people to vote from home.

It's not too late to take that idea to Austin, where Sen. Don Huffines of Dallas sits on the elections committee. Why shouldn't he carry a bill that would allow cities to experiment with the new approach, especially in lower-profile mayoral races?

For Stein, this is just about removing barriers to voting. For example, his center at Rice is about to strike a deal with Lyft to observe the results as the ride-share company offers free rides to the polls nationwide Nov. 6.

He said it's a better idea than just relying on the old standby of registering more people to vote. Same-day registration has been effective, Stein noted, but most efforts to round up would-be voters months or even years before Election Day aren't effective. Research shows those newly eligible voters often don't make it to the polls.

Time to fix this is now

I began by saying we're running out of time, and we are. If the best indication of whether people will to vote this time is whether they've voted in the past, then we're heading in the wrong direction.

Dallas voters are unusually aged. Our median age in 2015 was 62. Sixty two! We might as well be a Florida retirement community when it comes to voting age. What happens when those voters get too old to vote? Who's going to take their place?

Stein said voting does pick up some naturally as citizens age. Once you start paying property tax, or send kids to school, it's natural to want more say in local affairs. But he said those life changes aren't as big a predictor of who will vote as I might have thought. Much more powerful is whether the would-be voters have a history of voting.

Dallas, especially its younger adults and even middle-aged residents, have for many years been out of the habit of voting in local elections. There's little to suggest they'll get religion just because the older voters aren't doing their share any longer.

That's scary. At 6 percent, we don't have much room to lose when it comes to voter turnout. If we're not careful, our next mayor could just as easily be elected by a show of hands.

Michael A. Lindenberger is a Dallas Morning News editorial board member.

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