ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. \u2014 Voters met with candidates from several local races Saturday in St. Petersburg during the final weekend of early voting before Tuesday\u2019s primary election.<\/p>\n
The St. Pete Community Voices Candidate Forum gave candidates a chance to speak directly with voters and allowed residents to learn more about who is running before ballots are narrowed for the general election.<\/p>\n
Neshia Cohen said she came to the Childs Park Recreation Center to hear candidates in person and learn whether they are serious about the changes they discuss.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am hoping to learn that the changes that they talk about, they\u2019re serious about them and about the people that they\u2019re serving,\u201d Cohen said.<\/p>\n
Cohen said hearing from local candidates directly is important, because television advertisements and campaign materials are not enough for her to feel informed.<\/p>\n
\u201cToo many papers, too many commercials,\u201d Cohen said. \u201cI want to see it for myself.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another voter, Michael Harris, said he wanted to know which candidates are from St. Petersburg and what they plan to do for the city.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat are you really going to do for the people that are here in our community?\u201d Harris said.<\/p>\n
Event co-organizer Jabaar Edmond said the goal is to keep voters engaged, including in elections that do not typically draw a high turnout.<\/p>\n
\u201cPrimaries historically have low turnout,\u201d Edmond said. \u201cWhat we want to do is engage the voters. We want to engage the community and charge them up to be fired up about the next election.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to Florida\u2019s Division of Elections, roughly 600,000 people have voted early so far out of more than 13 million registered voters.<\/p>\n
Harris said voting in every election is necessary for residents who want to see changes in their community.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you don\u2019t get active, nothing\u2019s changed,\u201d Harris said.<\/p>\n
Edmond said organizers plan to hold another event before the general election in November. He said primaries are important because they determine which candidates advance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. \u2014 Voters met with candidates from several local races Saturday in St. Petersburg during the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":388102,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[767,3140,274,28,2287,4628,115,596,99,202,204,203,199,201,200,135,278,835],"class_list":["post-388101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-app-community","tag-app-local-state-politics","tag-app-top-stories","tag-florida","tag-local-politics","tag-matt-lackritz","tag-news","tag-pinellas-county","tag-politics","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news","tag-tampa","tag-top-stories","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=388101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388101\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/388102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=388101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=388101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=388101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}