I’m not asking for a great turnout (although that would be welcome surprise) but a good turnout. I might even settle for a fair turnout.

Sadly, I won’t be surprised if it’s the usual poor turnout.

Primary election turnouts remain an irritant and mystery for me. It’s difficult to understand why citizens, a lot of them, simply don’t seem to care who runs their governments. They don’t seem concerned about who is making the decisions that will affect them and their pocketbooks for anywhere from two to six years.

We all keep hearing the same voices and reading the same polls. Congress is at its lowest point in the polls in decades. Americans are sick of the bickering in Washington, D.C. Voters yearn for more compromise and less hardheadedness. They want education funded adequately.

And on and on.

Words and sentiments that a mere handful of voters back up at the polls on election day.

Tuesday, voters will determine who will represent them in city, county, state and federal elections. Some races will send Republican and Democratic candidates to either a runoff in August or the general election in November.

Other races, especially in some Republican primaries, will decide the outright winner. In those, about half the voters in the state (Democrats) won’t have a say in their representation.

It is a spot long-time Republicans will recall well. Democrats dominated state politics almost since statehood in 1907 and Republican votes in a primary went almost unnoticed.

So, as it was with the Democrats for decades, it is now often up to Republicans to choose the best person to represent their city, county or state.

This is an off-year election, the mid-terms. Presidential elections historically draw the best turnout at around 60 percent of eligible voters. Primaries in most all elections, and especially in non-presidential years, don’t fare as well.

In one of the hottest primary contests of 2012, Jim Bridenstine upset incumbent Rep. John Sullivan when 25 percent of the District 1 Republican voters showed up in the primary.

It gets worse. In 2009, Dewey Bartlett and some city councilors were elected by 30 percent of the voters, and that was in a general election.

Then, in 2011, one of the biggest turnovers in City Council history was decided by 16 percent of voters. That was followed in 2013 when 36 percent of the electorate re-elected Bartlett over former Mayor Kathy Taylor.

That 2013 turnout was the best of the city’s previous three general elections dating to 2002.

This is not to say that everyone elected in those embarrassing turnouts was a bad choice. In fact, many of those winners, maybe even most, have been very good public servants.

There have, however, been some real stinkers. And this is not simply a Tulsa or Oklahoma trend. It’s happening across the country.

The fact is, the primaries have been dominated by radical factions in both parties. The zealots need little incentive to go to the polls. And too many times they are the people who are deciding who makes our laws.

Politicians have to pander to the extremists because they know they hold their political fate in their hands. They know that too many reasonable people won’t show up in the primaries or even the general.

Richard Nixon once said that to win an election he had to run hard to the right in the primary and hard back to the middle in the general. Of course, he had some other memorable ways of winning elections.

These days, at least in the Republican camp, the credo is run hard to the right in the primary and keep on going that direction in the general. It’s a nod to the strength of the far right.

Conservative is not a dirty word. Henry Bellmon was a conservative and served this state with honor and distinction as governor (twice) and U.S. senator.

I don’t think Bellmon would make it out of a Republican primary today. I don’t think Ronald Reagan would either.

There are lots of ways to maybe fix the voting apathy problem. Important commissions have studied it and made some recommendations, such as voting on Sunday, multi-day voting, online voting (which makes me nervous) and other ideas, some good, some bad.

Nothing, however, will work until the voting public decides to take an active interest in the process of electing our leaders, at all levels.

Voting is not just a right, but I believe it is a duty. It also makes you feel good, like giving blood or volunteering.

I’ve written about this before, with little result. But, I’m not going to give up. Direct me to a wall, and I’ll butt my head against it.

It’s time reasonable Americans, especially Republicans, took back the power to make their decisions.

There’s another opportunity Tuesday. Hope to see you at the polls.