Absentee Ballots

If you live in Cleveland and have ever worried about Cuyahoga County’s voting system — whether it is more reliable to poke a computer screen or pencil a ballot — forget about it. You have more important things to worry about: Clevelanders don’t vote with their hands, they vote with their feet.

In the latest statistical blow to our collective solar plexus, we became America’s biggest population loser. Cuyahoga County lost 130,000 residents, according to the latest U.S. Census figures, for 2000 to 2006.

Even Detroit, the fourth biggest loser, couldn’t save us this time, a city that has rescued us twice from the distinction of being the poorest big city in America.

There are a number of things that could be said about this mass exodus. I would like to offer two.

The first is that if this population decline and its accompanying loss in tax dollars is added to our other financial woes — shortages of funds for schools, police, fire, emergency, highways, medical marts and convention centers — wouldn’t you expect to see the streets lined with people carrying signs saying, “The end is near?” But there are no signs. No signs, no concern.

The second observation is a good news, bad news story. InThe Plain Dealer’s front-page story about the county’s dramatic population loss, the editors seemed to imply that the loss isn’t as great as it appears, since 63 percent of those who left relocated to neighboring counties. Cuyahoga County lost 130,000 people, but eight nearby counties gained 82,000.

The good news, possibly, is that regionalism is catching on. Maybe we’re beginning to believe we live in the land of the musketeers, all eight of us (Ashtabula, Geauga, Lake, Lorain, Medina, Portage, Summit and Cuyahoga), where life is all for one and one for all.

We could use more of that thinking if it applies to attracting businesses to the region, sharing the cost of the effort and the resulting tax revenues. However, regionalism as a strategy for solving one’s own financial problems is nothing more than wishful thinking. A region of eight cash-strapped musketeers is no better than one: We’re all still broke.

When residents move to another county, they take their tax dollars with them. A million here, a million there, and before you know it, it adds up. If Cuyahoga County is ever going to save itself, or better yet, improve itself, it is going to have to do it by itself.

So we return to the real question: When are we going to start? Does anyone care that we’re one of America’s poorest cities? Does anyone care that we’ve lost more people than any other county in the U.S.?

Our performance as a city and a county is being voted on every day. We don’t have to take any polls to tell us what people think of our performance. We have as much data as we’ll ever need. One hundred and thirty thousand people have spoken. They have taken a path that is now well traveled: They have left.

What is it going to take to shake us out of our apathy?