DID YOU remember to vote Tuesday? It was election day. Honest. It was in all the papers. You had your normal and helpful advance stories about the candidates a few weeks out. You had the usual mug shots of many a smiling face accompanying said articles. After the election was over, the winners thanked their supporters and the losers conceded gracefully. It was 100 percent Americana-motherhood, apple pie and concessions and victory statements and . . . .
What? You didn’t vote?
Come to think, we don’t remember one radio or TV ad for a candidate in the weeks before Tuesday’s vote. Nor many yard signs for candidates. Where was all the hubbub, bub?
There wasn’t any. Tuesday’s was a quiet election.
Just the way the teachers’ unions might like it.
IN ONE school board zone in North Little Rock, a candidate was elected with 103 votes. In a large district encompassing much of central Little Rock, fewer than 475 people voted.
But we’re proud to say that thousands of people showed up for Bentonville’s elections Tuesday. There was a tax increase on the ballot.
Yet there are some school districts in Arkansas that will swear in new members of their local school boards who received less than a hundred votes Tuesday.
What’s happening here? How explain it?
Easy. Most school boards in the state-and those who manipulate them-prefer having their elections when most of the rest of us aren’t paying attention. That way, they don’t have to deal with an overly enthusiastic public messing around with delicate matters like voting and the like. That should be left to a select few, i.e., themselves. Can’t have the public being overly involved in the public’s business. That would come dangerously close to democracy.
It’s just so much easier for, say, the teachers’ unions to get their people elected to school boards when the outcome of an election can be left to hundreds, or maybe dozens, of voters rather than the unreliable masses. Those unions have a long and not-so-glorious tradition of getting out the vote, all right-but it’s the vote they want. Psst. Don’t noise it about, but vote this Tuesday. Early and often.
It’s also abundantly clear that a lot of those “serving” on school boards, or maybe marking time on school boards, would rather you didn’t worry your pretty little head about their election, re-election, or even re-re-election. It’s a simple system: The unions take care of those school board members and those school board members take care of the unions. The public would only be in the way.
Just this year, back in April, the Legislature missed an opportunity to move school board elections from September to . . . well, Election Day. That is, on whatever particular Tuesday in November all the other elected officials find themselves on the ballot. It wasn’t the Ledge’s best moment. (There are so shamefully few contenders for that distinction.) HERE’S what’s even more outrageous than (1) elected officials and their union backers scheming for a low turnout on election day and (2) a legislature that lets them get away with it. It’s the “reasons” these schemers give the public every time this subject comes up. Some of the usual suspects:
Sure, more voters might turn out in November, but that’s no guarantee those are informed voters.
To translate from politic speak, sure, more voters might turn out in November, but we can’t guarantee that our voters will outnumber the kind that might not rubber-stamp our slate of certified, union-endorsed candidates and yes men/women.
Consider your intelligence duly insulted, mere Citizen and Taxpayer.
School board elections would get lost in all the hoopla when a senator or president is on the ballot.
And school board elections aren’t lost now? Did you see the turnout in this week’s paper? Besides, voters are quite capable of voting and chewing gum at the same time. They even manage to vote for presidents and senators and congressmen and mayors and tax proposals and constitutional amendments and so importantly on up and down the ballot all at the same time.
School districts don’t always align with other political subdivisions. It would be a hassle for election officials to print another ballot.
Oh, we think election officials are pretty good at printing ballots for different precincts. They do it for a living. Every. Single. Election.
You’d be forgiven if you thought these reasons sounded more like excuses, pitiful excuses. And you’d be right. These aren’t reasons at all, just alibis.
Here’s a real reason and principle and guide when it comes to school elections: There should be no insider elections in a state with a motto like Regnat Populus.
Here the people rule.
Or are supposed to.
Editorial, Pages 16 on 09/21/2013