Today at City Hall, Mayor David Coss and City Councilors Chris Calvert, Rebeccca Wurzburger, Carmichael Domínguez and Ron Trujillo are being sworn to new terms.

Legally, they were popularly re-elected — including the unopposed Domínguez and Trujillo. But just how popular is that? Only 27 percent of our city's registered voters turned out. So the mayor, with his 58-34-8 percent win over Asenath Kepler and Miguel Chávez, was the actual choice of only 16 percent, más o menos.

Councilor Calvert did a tad better: In District 1, 31 percent voted, and he got 58 percent of that underwhelming turnout to Russell Simon's 26 percent and Doug Nava's 16 percent. And in District 2, Councilor Wurzburger's 72-percent victory over Stefanie Beninato's 28 percent was impressive, but still no majority of the district's voters.

In spite of all the efforts of so many civic organizations who held forums offering all candidates a chance to tell their fellow Santa Feans what they stood for and how they'd serve at City Hall, turnout was pathetic.

The reasons — or excuses — are numerous:

• Depressing economic times.
• Lack of candidates with the charisma, or the popular cause, to stir excitement.

• Lack of candidates at all, in the case of would-be opponents for Domínguez and Trujillo — even though Trujillo won his seat in 2006 by only two votes, itself underscoring the message to some District 4 voters that, if only I'd bothered voting ... Not that Trujillo didn't have plenty of appeal in his race against an incumbent, and not that he might not have won even bigger with more turnout; but residents of that southwest-side district still have to wonder ...
• Assertion of orneriness and the right not to vote.

• Sense of futility; that the incumbents could call in enough favors to skate through the campaign.
• Delight with, or complacency toward the folks in office, perhaps combined with relief that someone sufficiently smart, honest and hardworking was willing to serve.

Weather certainly wasn't an obstacle: Most of the day was beautiful; a great time to get out and vote.

Concerned citizens might wonder why not hold city elections when others take place, thus giving city campaigns some fallout from national or state general elections. The problem here is that our municipal elections are non-partisan — so if they took place in even-year Novembers, there could be plenty of partisan mischief-making.

In Santa Fe, it's usually Democrats running against Democrats, the labels withheld to make the contests look nonpartisan — and the masked-ball effect seems to work. But given the partisan flavor of last Tuesday's mayoral contest, a case might be made for city campaigns carrying Democratic, Republican, Green or other such labels. And in that case, why not follow the state and county system of primaries or conventions, then a November general election?

Turnout isn't always wonderful then, tampoco — but it's usually better than in March.

Already we can hear the vested interests saying things are fine as they are — and it's hard to disagree with much vehemence: The five who start new four-year terms today are pretty good, and we wish them well as they try to serve their fellow Santa Feans in times of scarce revenue.

But we'd bet that all five would be happier knowing they were the choice of most, not just a few, of their fellow citizens.