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As chief election judge Melanie Strudle surveyed the empty library at Col. E. Brooke Lee Middle School in Kemp Mill last week during the special election for the District 4 County Council seat, she could not help but compare it to the last election held there.

"It's not quite like what we had at the presidential," she said.

Massive lines and record voter turnout in November were replaced by a few trickle-in voters in May — 42 in three hours to be exact.

Political analysts in Montgomery County say those weaker numbers reflect turnout in the county and across the nation for special elections: People just don't vote in them.

"It is one of the frightening aspects of our democratic system," said election pollster Keith Haller, who is president of Potomac Incorporated, which does strategic polling and observes regional and local elections.

About 10 percent of registered voters in District 4 cast ballots in the May 19 special general election, which was held to fill the seat left vacant by Councilman Don Praisner (D), who died Jan. 30, according to the Montgomery County Board of Elections.

Democratic candidate and school board member Nancy Navarro of Silver Spring garnered 63 percent of the vote, beating the Republican candidate, tax reform advocate and real estate broker Robin Ficker, also of Silver Spring, by a 2-1 margin. George Gluck of Rockville, the Green Party candidate, came in a distant third.

The Board of Elections recorded that about 9 percent of District 4 voters cast ballots in last spring's special election, when Praisner ran to fill the seat left vacant following the death of his wife, longtime Councilwoman Marilyn J. Praisner (D), that February.

But Navarro's campaign was not surprised at the low turnout, field director Ken Silverman said. They were kind of expecting it, he added.

"I think that we knew going in that this was not going to be a very high turnout election," he said.

Silverman said he was hoping that this campaign could ride on the coattails of Barack Obama's presidential campaign. To some degree it worked, he said — about 1,000 more people voted in this year's special primary than last year's and about 335 people who had only voted in the presidential election cast ballots in this special election.

Still, the turnout was dismal, Haller said, adding that special elections are isolated events that don't draw voters the way larger elections do.

"It's so narrow. … How do you interject the importance of that in the average household?" he said.

Silverman agreed, saying a special election means fewer candidates are spending money to advertise the election to the voters.

But this special election was a little more unique than others, argued Stanton Gildenhorn, the former chairman of the Montgomery Democratic Party. Gildenhorn said there could have been a higher turnout in May if the Republican candidate was more viable.

Gildenhorn said he thinks Democrats didn't show up to vote in the general because they believed Navarro had a "no lose" situation.

But turnout may have had less to do with the candidates on the ballot and more to do with the candidates that were not, said District 4 resident and East County Citizens Advisory Board member Stanley Doore.

Doore noted this was the first District 4 County Council election in several years without a Praisner running.

In the past, elections were low because everyone took for granted the Praisners were going to run and win, he said. And yet, when there was no Praisner on the ballot, there was no base to rally the voters, he said.

"There's not that solid core back-up that the Praisners had here," Doore said.

But low turnout has its repercussions, analysts say. One thing almost all of the candidates running for the council seat this spring could agree on was that District 4 hasn't received as much attention as other districts since Marilyn Praisner's death. A lack of voting could play a part in that, they say.

A day after her election, Navarro noted District 4 voters were "fatigued" by two special elections one year's time and periods with no representation on the council.

Without activism there is no active government, said Natalie Cantor, the director of the Mid-County Regional Services Center.

"You can't make good decisions without both a wide and deep feeling for what the public wants," she said.

Haller suggested the state Board of Elections run a study on how to better advertise special elections to improve turnout.

But Marjorie Roher, a spokeswoman for the county's Board of Elections, said increasing turnout at elections is not the board's responsibility. The board sends sample ballots to registered voters notifying them of upcoming elections, but the rest is up to the candidates, she said.

Silverman said he thinks his candidate made a modest dent in bringing voters to the polls for such a small election. He noted Hispanic voters increased 19 percent from last year's special primary to this year's.

That represents "a slight change in a small universe, but obviously it made all the difference," he said.

Staff Writer Nathan Carrick contributed to this story.