We reason from an assumption that government is a solution. I’ve watched, and corresponded with the Elections Administrators over the past few years, and, unfortunately, found them creating more problems than solutions. On the other hand, from Fauci to county health department, we have seen poor decisions forced on the citizenry by bureaucrats more concerned with building their power than solving the problem that faced them.
It isn’t that government is the problem – but somehow we select people who want power over their peers. If we must have an Election Administrator, I want a person who is dedicated to the idea that every voter who wants to vote has that opportunity. When I look at the results of creating the position, and reducing the voting places – why in God’s name is it so unreasonable to hold the election of Trego’s school trustees in the Trego school building? Instead a bureaucrat in Libby sends the ballots out to the registered voters and those who receive them can mail them back to Libby to be counted.
I am certain that the state senators and representatives who wrote and passed the laws ‘reforming’ our elections believed they were doing what was best for us. Somehow, reducing voter input through elections has been passed through both of Montana’s legislative houses, at the recommendation of the Secretary of State. When those worthy elected representatives built a system that was more prone to failures than the system it replaced, changing the face out front doesn’t solve the problem. The problems we personalize into the election administrator are systemic, not personal.
It’s not a party thing – both houses, the representatives and the senators, both parties, the dims and the repugnants, voted to reduce voter choice. It’s systemic, not personal. We do not elect the best and brightest. Those we elect do not hire the best and brightest.
When we elect mediocrity or less, it should come as no surprise that those elected representatives hire mediocrity. When the folks they hire, in turn, hire people like themselves, it should be no surprise that the staff we encounter have egos greater than their abilities. Internal promotion amplifies the problem – the guy who survives and becomes department head wasn’t the best and brightest when he or she was hired, has learned the job and spent twenty or thirty years in the same building, and we wind up with management by those who are, at best, minimally capable – and that wasn’t enough to let them get a different job and move into a bigger game.
Our problems may appear to be the individuals who are hired to serve in various positions – but there is a system that puts these folks in their positions. Our system seems to work best with the County’s road department.
Leave a Reply