Ballot Crisis–A Self-Government Disqualifier?
Following an interesting debate on the screwups this week at the District’s Board of Elections and Ethics. As Washington City Paper’s own Loose Lips columnist Mike DeBonis has so capably reported, the vote-counting fiasco of Tuesday night involved the story of a troubled cartridge and an elections office that spent a day scrambling and hunkering down to figure things out.
In the comments section, one Elizabeth Elliott/Foggy Bottom compellingly recounted a tale of bureaucratic horror relating to the city elections operation, concluding with this line:
“If ever there was a case for not giving DC the vote, this fiasco is it.”
Seems that every time we screw something up in D.C., this same argument gets trotted out. Oh, we can’t govern ourselves, so we don’t deserve that voting rep or senator.
Has anyone ever considered that perhaps the caliber of our politicians and bureaucrats might improve a bit if we actually had voting representation. How many qualified public servants do you think have left D.C. in the past few decades just because they have essentially no future leapfrogging to national office from a post in D.C.? How many frustrated residents have left for the ‘burbs–yes because of bad schools and crime, but also because they get enfranchised when they cross the District line?
And one other thing: Doesn’t a poorly run city–which D.C. has pretty much ceased to be–deserve voting rights just as much as a perfectly managed city?
6 Responses to “Ballot Crisis–A Self-Government Disqualifier?”
Leave a Reply
Recent Posts
- Extended Drinking Hours at Inauguration: It’s Official (1
)
The vote is 9-4 in favor of extending hours of alcohol service at local taverns and nightclubs until… - Extended Inauguration Drinking Hours Not a Done Deal! (1)
DCist points to a load of confusion over the District's plans to extend drinking hours in the days l… - Sean Taylor’s Officially Fair Game (0)
On WTEM's "Monday Morning Quarterback" show yesterday, host Andy Pollin led a discussion of Sunday's… - AU Professor Proposes Using Complex Online Scheme to Make D.C. Simple to Understand (0)
Washington, D.C. is a complicated place. Journalists in D.C. bureaus are getting laid off in droves.… - Postcards From Home: Film and Paper Archive (0)
Medical Museum, 1993…
- Extended Drinking Hours at Inauguration: It’s Official (1
September 11th, 2008 at 4:19 pm
Thanks, Erik. I was about to make the same point about the quality of our officials, but you did it better (and more prominently). I’d only add that the lack of voting representation and ability of Congress to overrule our local officials could also demotivate our voters and lead to lower turnouts, which Elizabeth is making part of her argument. She hasn’t spelled out what the cutoff turnout rate for deserving representation is, though whatever it might be I’m sure many places outside DC would fail to meet it.
September 11th, 2008 at 6:39 pm
Elizabeth bases her point a bit more on the question of a lack of turnout than on the incompetency issue. And that makes, at least, a bit more sense, since the question of internal competence goes more to the question of whether we ought to be in the business of governing ourselves rather than a question of whether we ought to have officials representing our interests in Congress. (And really, I think she was just venting. She’s hardly your typical snide Virginian making dated Marion Barry jokes).
Really the heart of the matter is that DC residents don’t care about local politics. But they do care about federal politics. That’s why turnout for strictly local elections is abysmal and why people make their election choices through the prism of national politics. But really, does Jack Evans really govern with “Democratic” positions? Does it make any sense at all that he, hippies like Mendleson and Cheh, and machine politicians like Barry and Brown are all in the same party?
It’s a scam. There is no DC Democratic Party. There are a bunch of politicians who have views from all across the spectrum who run as Democrats because they have to. The real “parties” in this town don’t have names.
But I’m rambling.
Yes DC deserves full Home Rule despite a history of incompetence (particularly since that history of incompetence can be directly blamed on a lack of home rule for most of the 20th century). Yes it deserves full congressional representation, despite poor turnout for local elections. And yes the only way to increase democratic participation is to eliminate the fallacy that offically organized parties matter and have everyone run on Election Day in November and let ranked voting sort them out.
September 11th, 2008 at 6:47 pm
Pointed this out on the other thread, but give me a break about voter participation….Seven states held primaries Tuesday as well:
Rhode Island 7 percent turnout
Wisconsin less than 10 percent with just over 6 percent in one of its most populous counties
Minnesota 10.9 percent
Vermont less than 10 percent
New Hampshire approximately 15 percent
New York less than 15 percent
Delaware 22 percent
September 11th, 2008 at 10:23 pm
I have said this before (though not here) and I’ll say it again, there are plenty of other disfunctional municipalities and states in the US that have voter representation. We’re not the only place where our executive went to jail. Should Detroit not get the representation now that their mayor is on the way there? What about the state of Louisiana? Recent Illinois governor in jail now. Orange County, CA went bankrupt in the ’80s but no one said they shouldn’t have a Congressman and two Senators. I could give example after example of places outside of DC with bad government, where states take over the city’s school district (Hello Baltimore, Newark, etc.) and they still get voting representation in congress.
Part of self rule and representation is that we have the right to bad government. In a democracy, you get the government you deserve (someone said this, but I don’t have time to find the citation for the quote). If we are only going to give representation to areas that have good government (whatever that means), then a lot of places would not be represented. There’d be no senators since every state has some locality with bad governance (I could make snide comments about Alaska and a certain person who created enormous debt while mayor, but I won’t). The criteria isn’t about how well we govern ourselves, it is about the right to govern ourselves into the ground as a city and as a country if we so choose. We should have a say about taken the path to hell in a handbasket and right now we are just going there with no say so.
September 11th, 2008 at 10:52 pm
You have to fight for your rights - & DC people are too lazy or don’t care enough to fight. There are no “god given” rights. The only rights we have are those we fought for & won.
It’ll never happen in DC, not even in 20 years when the city is 75% white. People here are too lazy & just don’t care enough to do anything other than an demonstration & to write a slogan that is nonsensical.
September 14th, 2008 at 5:57 pm
“There is no DC Democratic Party. There are a bunch of politicians who have views from all across the spectrum who run as Democrats because they have to. The real “parties” in this town don’t have names.”
Once again, Reid, you have correctly identified my scatter-shot frustrations and suggested a just and much more economical solution to cure it.
That being said, those in power and currently running the so-called “parties,” will fight such a move tooth and nail. Check out the convoluted tale of term limits, overwhelmingly passed by referendum in 1994:
http://www.dcwatch.com/issues/termdefault.htm