Editorials

A simple idea

Hold elections on (gasp!) election day

So what's happening this coming September, specifically on the 16th? A dove hunt?

Why, sure. Folks'll get out in the fields with their camo and shotguns all over this small but wonderfully outdoorish state and try to reach their limit on the critters. Happens every year.

Also, football will be back! Oh, yes, the new national pastime.

What else?

Um . . . maybe the first of this year's difficult homework questions from the kids? The first cool night after a long summer? Maybe cousin Martha will visit.

If you say September 16th to most folks, the first thing that comes to their minds is probably not going to be an election. But look at the papers.

Candidates for school boards are filing now for the coming election. It's ridiculous and even more than a little sneaky. Not that they are filing. What's sneaky is the date of the election.

School boards, and the unions that control many of them, long ago figured out how to game the system. No, no, no, we can't have school board elections on election day, that is, in November. That would mean folks--citizens! voters! Those People!--might turn out and vote. About something that really shouldn't be any of their concern. The public has too much say in public business as it is, doncha know. That sort of thing should be left to the experts--like the leaders of teachers' unions and their pliant tools on school boards throughout the state. How else can we expect The Powers That Be to protect their own interests at the expense of the mere public?

The danger, you see, is that a lot of people vote in November, when senators and presidents and mayors and state representatives and attorneys general are elected. And for teachers' unions who control so many of Arkansas' school boards, that's a real problem. Their hand-picked candidates might get beat. Dangerous thing, democracy.

It's better, in the unions' view, to stage their own elections a few months earlier, when the mere citizen isn't paying close attention. Because you can be sure the unions will get out their voters. Always have. It just takes a few fliers at school and a few mailers to certain addresses, and the elections will go the way the union bosses want those elections to go.

But don't noise it about, please. Low turnout is key when the teachers' unions are out to keep their control of Arkansas' school boards.

No doubt we'll get a few huffy letters to the editor and even some emails about this editorial from union types or their puppets on school boards who will patiently explain to us amateurs that holding school board elections in September is good for the people. After all, there are just so many other candidates on the ballot in November. Voters in school elections need a separate election day so the poor things don't get confused. They would do better to just stay out of the way so their betters, i.e., the union bosses, can run things.

On the other hand, some of us think voters are quite capable of keeping their heads clear of confusion even if the members of school boards were elected in November. Any union types who use the Confusion Argument aren't fooling anybody, maybe not even themselves. But that's about the only argument they have, so they tend to trot it out at every opportunity.

So what's to be done? Well, the Legislature meets in a regular session come January. It's too late to change things for this year, but January would be a good time to revisit this not so little matter, and see what can be done to move school board elections to (gasp!) election day.

Elections in a free country shouldn't be sneaky. Too bad that point even has to be made. But here the people rule--or should.

Editorial on 07/11/2014

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