Meh. It's name recognition.
It's also just plain laziness.
The first week of early voting is done. 280 people have voted in a town of 17,000, with approximately 15,000 old enough to vote. That includes any county residents coming in to vote for school board. Traditionally, about two thirds vote early. Last year's city council election turnout was 692.
As a candidate with a website, I have ads triggering on every candidate's name and every search even remotely related to council elections, so I see stats on how many times people Google anything about the election. 27,000 of the 30,000 searches were from people looking for directions to something local. 1,200 were from people looking for appraisal district information. (A lot of people have had their property appraisals go up significantly in the last couple of months and are looking for the process to contest it.) 25 were searches for the names of councilmembers or candidates other than me - six of those for members either not up for election or unopposed. 131 for other election/council/ISD related terms. 40 people searching for my name or some variant. (Though I intentionally made the URL a lot easier for most people to remember than my name since there are at least two businesses and 30-40 people in town with very similar last names. Most of the hits on my website are direct links from local blogs, Facebook links, or people typing in the URL.)
There might have been a hundred people at the candidate forum, and again, that includes SISD candidates and, thus, county voters. Questions were pretty soft for non-incumbents. As I understand it, the Dublin/DISD forum had a similar turnout with a city population of about 7,000.
Overall, barely 200 people care enough to Google for any information on candidates. Five people have called, emailed or approached me at public events to ask my position on any issues.
Finding 500 people who will complain about something the council has done is easy. Getting that many to vote is like pulling teeth. Getting them to actually research candidates for even five minutes so there might be a chance they know who and what they're voting for appears to be impossible.
