I wonder about the possible connection between fewer and fewer truly local news sources and engagement in local elections. I've been tossing around the idea of emailing a set of questions to each of our local candidates just so that I can share those answers with my family and neighbors - I did that last year for our school board elections, and it got a lot of positive responses in our local FB group. Our town is under 5k people but our turnout for local elections rarely tops 200 people.