So much was at stake a week ago, including the fate of the free world and the very survival of Alpena Public Schools and Hillman Community Schools as we know them.

Yet just more than a quarter of Alpena County’s registered voters showed up to have their say.

Just 26% of the county’s registered voters cast ballots in the Feb. 27 presidential primary, News staff writer Steve Schulwitz reported. That means nearly three out of every four voters simply stayed home.

In addition to the Republican and Democratic primaries that helped determine which candidate represents each party come November, Northeast Michigan ballots also included proposals to renew property taxes that fund operations in the Alpena and Hillman school districts.

Those are serious stakes.

It may have seemed a foregone conclusion that Republican former President Donald Trump and Democratic President Joe Biden would win their respective primaries, but it wasn’t necessarily so. A sizeable minority of Democratic voters, for example, cast ballots for “uncommitted,” rather than voting for Biden, as a show of protest for Biden’s support of Israel in that nation’s war with Hamas in Gaza (248 Democratic voters voted “uncommitted” in Alpena County). An even more sizeable minority of voters across Michigan picked Nikki Haley over Trump.

And definitely not certain was the passage of Alpena and Hillman’s tax asks. If those votes had gone down, the school districts would have lost significant income and faced severe cuts to balance the budget. That they did pass means the owners of businesses and second homes will continue to pay steep taxes to fund the school districts.

With stakes that high, it saddens us to see that so few of our neighbors wanted to have their say on the outcome.

We have another primary coming up in August to determine who will represent the parties in November for a variety of county and local races. That primary is especially important here, where Republicans win most seats. That means that, in many races, the primary winner will be the winner in November, so August is arguably the most important election to local government control.

We need more voters to participate in the entire electoral process, not just the presidential elections (when turnout can near 70%).