It's got the highest median family income of any county in the country, among the highest per-capita incomes. Half the adult population has college degrees. The county is very proud of the public schools and it gets a lot of attention.

[link|http://www.springfieldvirginia.com/fairfax_county.htm|[link|http://www.springfieldvirginia.com/fairfax_county.htm|http://www.springfi...x_county.htm]] has some stats.

I don't claim that Fairfax is average. It isn't. But I don't think that most of the school districts are as bad as DC, Chicago and NY were (and maybe are) as far as administration overhead goes.

On voting, well lots of races don't attract a lot of interest. And many local elections (govenor, etc.) don't coincide with national races so often people don't bother. It's unfortunate...

Cheers,
Scott.