The public corruption trial and guilty verdicts for former Mayor Pro Tem Don Hill and his cohorts have brought about cries for reform at City Hall.

In response, Mayor Tom Leppert and the City Council are considering a number of changes that would bring more transparency to city government. They include the registering of paid lobbyists and a requirement that would require the approval of several council members to bring a zoning item before the council in an effort to encourage more oversight on projects in individual districts.

While these and other changes would shine a brighter light on the process, they won't stop a crook from being a crook.

If a council member, appointed officials and their cronies want to game the system, they will find a way to do so.

True reform, particularly in southern Dallas, will only come when residents take control of the electoral process.

The sad reality is that many southern Dallas residents checked out a long time ago when it comes to voting and supporting candidates.

Generally, elections in Dallas are won and lost with a fraction of registered voters.

So southern candidates who talk about true change, or have more to offer than their challengers, are routinely buried by a ragged but entrenched political apparatus that's powered by voter apathy.

That apathy is what's to blame for the scandals at City Hall, not a lack of rules or guidelines.

Indeed, the most recent council elections show that most residents are not engaged in the process.

Take District 7, where eight candidates campaigned in the south's most watched contest. Those candidates could only muster 3,940 votes in a district anchored by South Dallas and Fair Park.

Incumbent Carolyn Davis went on to win easily in a runoff, where only a fraction of the voters participated.

Low turnout numbers were evident across the city.

Let's face it. Something is wrong.

The most memorable turnouts in southern Dallas were in 2008, when Barack Obama made his historic run to the White House.

In 2005, voters defeated a proposal that would have given then Mayor Laura Miller broader powers. Only animosity toward a woman dubbed by her rivals as the "dream killer" and a once-in-a-lifetime anti-referendum crusade motivated the masses to go out and vote.

But there are reasons people in southern Dallas and throughout the city don't participate in elections.

Transplants, for instance, are turned off by local politics and don't want anything to do with the process. What's more, the oppressive economic conditions in many southern Dallas neighborhoods don't attract that Dallas transplant who has moved to the city for a professional career.

That person probably lives in DeSoto.

What's left in the neighborhood is often a discouraged, beat-down electorate with no hope or motivation.

That has to change.

The City Council can enact laws that make city government the most transparent body in the country.

But the kind of corruption and shenanigans revealed in Hill's trial will always be possible unless voters re-engage in the process and pick better candidates.

In the end, you get who you elect.

gjeffers@dallasnews.com