Let’s talk about frogs.

The folk wisdom is that if you put a frog in tepid water and slowly increase the heat, the creature will slowly boil to death rather than jump out of harm’s way.

Call it complacency, call it a false sense of security, call it just plain laziness, or stupidity, the result is a dead frog.

Now, just among us frogs …

There were 59,179 registered voters in Howard County eligible to take part in the May 8 primary. Of that number, 11,394 ballots were cast. Seventeen voters marked their disdain for the process by casting blank ballots.

That equates to a voter turnout of 19.25 percent.

Crank up the heat a few degrees.

While neither party acquitted itself well, my star-crossed Democrats, as usual, claimed the prize for creative self-immolation.

The first obligation of a party apparatus is to fill its own ticket. The party leadership may need to sweet-talk, draft, shanghai, or otherwise induce or seduce people to run for local offices, but it is a basic party responsibility to do so.

The Democrat candidate list had more holes in it than the rationale behind a policy being announced in the Rose Garden by The Donald.

There will be opportunity to fill the ticket during the summer, but those late entries will have to play catch-up, and if slots are left empty, how can you expect to turn out a local Democrat vote if there aren’t any local Democrats to vote for?

Is it just me or is it getting warmer around here?

As the pot begins to bubble, in one of the few offices in which there was a race, Center Township Trustee, the party central committee felt compelled to endorse one candidate over another.

There are times when a candidate is so at odds with accepted norms of behavior or policy that the party should be doing something about it. That was not the case here.

The “endorsed” candidate won in a close race. Can the local Democrat brain trust imagine what would have happened if the anointed one had lost? They would have handed the opposition a blunt instrument with which to pummel the winner—who couldn’t even get the endorsement of her own party!

As it is, who can blame the losing candidate’s supporters for resenting a clumsy attempt to emulate Debbie Wasserman-Shultz’s infamous “thumb on the scale” routine in the 2016 primaries? How did that work out?

How can the party expect to bring the losing candidate’s supporters back into the same tent from which they were originally so rudely thrown out?

Why can’t I feel my own skin?

And why is it turning bright red?

In a well-researched article appearing on the front page of the May 10 Kokomo Tribune, the writer characterized the same pathetic 19.25 percent turnout as a significant achievement, given that this is an “mid-term” i.e. non-presidential, primary. Citing information in the article, 19.25 percent is certainly better than a 9 percent turnout in 2014 and isn’t far behind the 22 percent primary turnout in 2010.

But come on, fellow frogs…

At best, this means that less than one in five registered voters determined the choices for the November general election,

The health of a republic is measured by the level of participation in the electoral process by its citizens.

One in five is evidence of a clean bill of health? I don’t think so.

Providentially, the frog folk tale is a folk tale. The science types among us attest to the fact that the frog will leap out of the pot before it reaches terminal heat.

Which means, fellow frogs, that maybe it’s time to jump.

A republic is not a perpetual motion machine that runs forever on its own momentum. It needs to be tended. It needs to be refreshed from time to time.

Those times are called elections.

There will be a “do over” in November. Multiple offices, great and small, will be at stake. It will be time to shake off our lethargy, get out of the pot, and cast a vote.

Otherwise, the main course at the winner’s victory dinner may well be frog legs.