(Editorial - Graphic Illustration - MetroCreativeConnection)

Dumbfounded by the results of the May 12 election in West Virginia? If so, the second question must be: Did you vote?

According to preliminary numbers, it is likely you did not.

West Virginia Secretary of State Kris Warner announced last week that only approximately 21% of eligible voters participated in an election that will profoundly change our communities and the way business gets done in Charleston and Washington, D.C.

To be clear, Warner’s office said that percentage includes early in-person voting and absentee ballots received ahead of Election Day. Totals may rise slightly after provisional ballots and eligible absentee ballots are processed in the canvass.

But even with a small increase, the numbers mean that nearly four-fifths of Mountain State voters failed to exercise their right — failed to fulfill their responsibility — to vote. That is, frankly, pathetic.

It is also dangerous.

Our form of government works when the people — those the politicians hope to be elected to represent — care enough to participate. When we do not vote, when we teach those politicians they do not, in fact, answer to US, we are handing them the reins without consequence.

Too many of them are already coming to believe they answer only to a very small minority. What a shame that West Virginia voters just showed them, they might be right.

It cannot be expressed strongly enough: What you say in your social media posts that you stand for means NOTHING if you do not back up that stance with a vote to match.

Our options in November have been chosen for us. We can’t turn back from that. But we can resolve that then — and in the next primary or local election — the choice about who represents and perhaps even leads us will not be made by so few that we are left with government by … a few people.