We’re always reluctant to read too much into low voter turnout numbers.

Tuesday’s primary election, for instance, drew relatively few voters to the polls. Despite an interesting statewide race on the Republican side featuring three candidates for governor, only 27 percent of Republicans hit the polls.

When voters don’t bother to vote, it can be read as a sign that they don’t care or, worse, they are so discouraged they feel their vote doesn’t count.

On the other hand, as you look around the world, you will usually find the highest turnout rates in the midst of social, economic and political turmoil. People in places like Afghanistan and Iraq are often hoping to improve their lot at the polls, most often in vain.

While we always encourage voters to vote, a low turnout can also be read as a sign voters are relatively satisfied with the status quo.

Tuesday, in one small community, voters showed how quickly they can become engaged when they are not happy with the way things are going.

In Brownfield, voters turned out in record numbers to send all three of their selectmen packing, and all because of the initial efforts of one woman.

Alvina Day organized a recall drive two months ago for Selectmen Vincent Pestilli, Irving Potter and David Thompson. She gathered enough votes to get the recall question on the ballot after, she says, selectmen began acting a little high-handed.

“I think they got to a point where they thought they were unstoppable,” Day told the Sun Journal on Wednesday. So, she set out to prove otherwise.

Selectmen had initiated an investigation of town clerk and registrar of voters, Wanda Bartlett, for possible vote fraud. They removed Bartlett from her registrar’s position and docked her pay, outraging some residents.

The Attorney General’s Office has charged Bartlett with a misdemeanor count of trying to influence a voter, and she has pleaded not guilty.

But voters rendered their own verdict on the dispute Tuesday, voting Pestilli, Potter and Thompson out of office, and re-electing Bartlett to the posts of clerk, treasurer and tax collector.

Amazingly, more than 800 voters went to the polls, and that’s in a town with a total population of 1,250. In the last governor’s race four years ago, 468 Brownfield voters went to the polls.

The recall essentially leaves the town without an elected governing body, so the town attorney says he will seek a Superior Court order authorizing the town administrator to pay bills and keep things running.

Meanwhile, Alvina Day is unapologetic. “I did the right thing,” she told the Sun Journal.

Voters apparently agreed.