Low voter turnout has caused three states to cancel presidential primaries for 2004, but Illinois is not currently following that trend.

According to an Associated Press story earlier this week, Kansas, Colorado and Utah successfully dropped their state-controlled primaries based on lack of funding and low public participation.

“States that are doing that are doing so based on the fact that no one’s voting,” State Senator Dale Righter R-Mattoon said. “Elections are expensive to pay for when voters don’t vote.”

According to state election board records from Utah and Colorado, presidential primaries have a very low turnout.

In 2000, Utah had a 19 percent voter turnout according to the governor’s office’s election statistics. Only 213,292 of 1,118,041 registered voters cast ballots.

According to its Secretary of State’s election records, primaries held in Colorado for the 2000 presidential election yielded only 88,735 ballots cast out of 792,034 registered voters.

The 11.2 percent voter turnout rate is considerably less than in Illinois.

Illinois State Board of Elections Official Vote Book statistics said 25.92 percent of registered voters took part in the 2000 primary.

Of 6,745,655 registered voters, 1,748,191 cast ballots that Spring.

Four years prior, 1,804,626 voters were present for the presidential primary. That is nearly 30 percent of the 6,125,044 registered.

“As a general principle, taxpayers are paying for the election process,” Righter said.

“The state treats that like any other program out there.”

When significant amounts of money are being spent on events with low turnouts, states are considering dropping them.

“At some point the elected representatives have to make a decision,” Righter said.

Primary turnouts typically stay below 20 percent of registered voters, a percentage that is still higher than caucus turnouts.

Righter said states canceling primaries will most likely turn to caucuses to pick each party’s presidential nominees. Caucuses are an “older style” of determining nominees, he said. “They are a great deal less expensive.”

The Illinois Presidential Primary will be held in early March.

City Editor Carly Mullady can be reached at [email protected].