We Won't Be Fooled Again... Or Will We?

It’s May of an election year. I can hear the collective groan roll across the county, beginning with our over–stuffed mailboxes filled with slate mailers from all the usual suspects, like special interest groups and political parties. Flipping through channels during commercial breaks only provides us with repetitive viewings of those same political commercials. There’s no getting away from it this month, right up until that June 7th Primary.

You and me, we have a job to do, and that job is to understand who and what we are voting for when we fill out that ballot. 63% of us will vote via the absentee ballots, which will roll out over the first week of this month, selecting candidates across the board, from the nation’s highest office right down through the state, county and city levels. We’re going to vote for propositions and judges, school boards and water boards.

If we get through the primaries and nominate a candidate before the conventions, then sit back and watch these parties maneuver into a brokered convention and subvert the will of the people by selecting their preferred insider candidate. If this happens, I believe we will have reached an irrevocable point in history in which all faith or trust in the public servants that are supposed to work for us, as well as the political parties we choose to align with, is lost.

If this is the case, some of you are asking, then why bother subjecting ourselves to the election process? If it doesn’t make a difference, why invest in the process? Because every now and then, it does.

Just recently we saw the citizens of Carlsbad demand a special election for Measure A and then defeat it. A quick summary: a developer wanted to build a shopping mall on land adjacent to the Agua Hedionda Lagoon. They acquired the land and went to work, promising the community they would have plenty of open space (a proclamation that included the parking lot), preserve surrounding wetland space and the famous strawberry fields, and that there wouldn’t be much of an increase in traffic, since the location was freeway accessible. The developer put together a citizen’s initiative to get it on the ballot (which invoked controversy in itself ) and gathered the needed signatures. At this time, the developer went before the City Council and sold them on the concept, initiating the process in a way that skirted the citizen’s vote. The decision was easy for the City Council: money for the city coffers, jobs during the construction phase as well as staffing the new businesses, all of which would result in a destination location for people to visit (and spend more money). But it wasn’t so simple.

All kinds of questions began circulating, questions that couldn’t be directly answered. Questions about Environmental Impact Reports—or lack thereof— and about the developers’ relationships with some of the members on the council. Enough questions, in fact, that another citizen’s initiative was created. This lead to a special election, an election which cost the taxpayers of Carlsbad an inordinate half a million dollars. The end result? The developer’s project was denied by the voters, but even that victory was by a very slim margin. The Carlsbad drama has encouraged two new candidates to run for city council seats that went unchallenged in the last election. The community of voters came together and proved that every opinion, every vote, matters.

So my friends, before you make your mark on the ballot, take some time and get to know the people and issues for which you’ll be voting. Because yes, your vote does matter.