Officials predict something like a 67 percent turnout for today’s election. And that’s supposed to be good. Very good. Great, in fact.

In other words, if one out of three registered voters in the Inland Northwest says “forget it” today, election supervisors will consider it a success. A success rate of 67 percent won’t get a college football team in the top 25, but American democracy sees it as a trophy-winning performance.

Elsewhere on this page, three columnists address the election theme in different ways. Two of them – Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial writer John Bersia, formerly of the Orlando Sentinel, and Sheryl Cates of the National Domestic Violence Hotline in Austin, Texas – are positive. Both exhort American voters to select leaders capable of making sound decisions about pressing issues.

One issue, the war in Iraq, figures high in the electorate’s consciousness. The other, domestic violence, is overshadowed. It gets less attention during a nationwide campaign than it deserves.

Yet Bersia and Cates see the merit of self-governance, an opportunity for capable leaders to make sound decisions that will reflect national values and put public resources to the best use. Assuming, that is, that those two out of three people who are conscientious enough to participate make sound decisions, too.

The third writer, Tom Feran of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, is more cynical. He chastises candidates and campaign specialists who have turned their backs on the idealistic aspirations Bersia and Cates have voiced for the political process. They have appealed instead, Feran notes, to “shrill hysteria” fed by a barrage of attacks that tear down would-be public servants while shedding little light on who can deliver desperately needed leadership.

Voters in Eastern Washington and North Idaho know too well what Feran is talking about. Television channels are saturated with accusations hurled at political candidates by either their opponents or their opponents’ richly funded supporters. Each day’s mail brings a fistful of slick political ads with too little room (after plastering the opponent with mud) to offer more than superficial arguments on behalf of the preferred candidate. At night, the phone starts ringing, only to herald recorded messages from familiar public figures who apologize for the technique but launch into their shallow spiel anyway.

No wonder a third of registered voters abstain. Maybe they are turned off by a process that considers them stupid enough to make the kind of weighty decision Bersia urges on the strength of a recorded 30-second sales pitch or a postcard-sized trash mailing.

What’s become of studying issues, confronting candidates and casting an informed vote? That approach would render attack ads a waste of money, but it’s been rejected by the silent one out of three (and we haven’t even talked about those who don’t register in the first place).

Elections shouldn’t be conducted this way, and citizens shouldn’t stand for it. They should vote.