Just five months after voters waited in long lines to make their pick for president, voter apathy returned to Los Angeles. 

Only 15 percent of registered voters participated in Tuesday's election, which featured few nail-biting races or well-known candidates. 

"I'm not from here and I'm not voting for president, so I don't really care about the city election," said Carly Nagel, from Cleveland, Ohio. "If there was a hot-button issue, I would have felt more compelled to vote." 

Voter turnout in Los Angeles municipal elections has steadily declined since 2001, when 36 percent of registered voters cast ballots and the mayoral race was a three-way competition between Steve Soboroff, Antonio Villaraigosa and eventual winner James Hahn. 

The participation numbers weren't surprising considering incumbent Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa faced little challenge and there was no controversial topic like November's Proposition 8.

Addressing reporters after casting his vote in Hancock Park, Villaraigosa encouraged voters to turn out and have their voices heard.

"Whether you vote for me or not, you should go out and exercise your right to cast a ballot," said Villaraigosa as he stood in front of his polling place.

This sentiment was echoed in polling centers from Hollywood to Westwood.

At one Hollywood polling center, an apartment building on Sierra Bonita Ave., poll workers estimated about 2 to 3 percent of registered voters would be casting ballots on Tuesday.

Pollsters were neither optimistic nor hopeful about the turnout. Some lamented that if voters aren't happy with the results, then they have nobody but themselves to blame.

"The people who don't come out to vote are always the first to complain," said Max Drucker, a 97-year-old poll worker at the Sierra Bonita location.

Heather Hidy, the apartment building manager, lamented how it seemed that voters didn't care about this election.

"In November, there was a line of hundreds of people before we even opened. Today we'll be lucky if we get more than 100 people total, and we have almost 2,264 registered voters in our area," Hidy said.

Other non-voters had obligations they considered more important. 

"In this economy, getting a job is my election," David Arthur said, explaining that he had several interviews lined up during the day.