I owe McCity an apology
As it turned out, their analysis of their electorate was more prescient than mine. On America's birthday, that's a fact worth acknowledging but not celebrating.
Happy Birthday America! I was in a lot better place when this photo was taken than campers were on 4th of July Friday. What a bummer!
A few months ago, I wrote a scathing post criticizing a McCity staffer's evaluation of a citizen poll on the 'streets tax,' which was up for renewal. Of an electorate of 2600 registered voters, only 440 (17%) responded to the poll. The staffer concluded that the results showed that "most citizens" show "strong community support" for the tax. Huh?
About 10 days later, a total of 431 voters (16%) showed up for the election and the measure passed by a slam dunk. The actual turnout was 9 votes less from the poll results! No, that did not vindicate the staffer's assertion of "most citizens" and it didn't show "strong community support" by any stretch. What it did show was that the Don't Give a Damn party (DGAD) won by a landslide. If they had voted, DGAD would have kicked butt—74% to the street tax's pitiful 16%. The staffer was way off in her evaluation of the community at large, but since DGAD has no standing, she nailed it in the stat that counted.
‘Letters’ is going to an every other week schedule for the summer and fall, unless circumstances beyond my control unzip my lip (which is also generally beyond my control in case you haven’t noticed :)
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Every other year, elections are exclusively local. Membership in the DGAD party in those years swells to in excess of 75% on average. The 4th of July weekend gave me impetus to ponder this persistent phenomenon. Nobody has seriously tried to convert DGAD members to Give A Damn (GAD) members. So, ever aspiring to contribute instead of just critique, I decided to volunteer a few ideas. My premise is that thousands of Great Depression soup kitchens can't be wrong. How about stealing their idea of conditioning pleasure (food) with business (religious instruction)? Only in this case, the pleasure is entertainment and the business is voting.
There is abundant evidence that, in today's America, nothing matters more than the party affiliation letter after a candidate's name—even to so-called ‘independents’ who campaign strategists know are mostly partisan leaners. That indifference to who the candidate actually is explains why we spare no expense to have county clerks rigorously screen to keep partisan dogs and dead people off the ballot. Nobody knows the difference and what an embarrassment if one won! There must be some way to shift that tribal focus to actual character attributes. Google says that the #1 gripe people have about elected officials at all levels is that once they get elected, they become totally myopic and self-serving.
So I envisioned a 'get out the vote' town street fair about a week ahead of every off-year Election Day. Candidates would compete in a series of contests to help the electorate zero in on skill-set and public responsiveness instead of straight party affiliation:
• The Candidate Tango. A Dancing with The Stars kind of event in which candidates draw pairings. Candidate pairs of the same sex can draw straws to see who dances in drag or they can elect to dance as a same-sex couple. If one is gay and the other is straight, problem solved. Those who tend to switch will just have to flip a coin for the night. To keep everything hygienic, both candidates will get a rose to hold between their teeth. Benefit: voters can judge a candidate's sense of humor, interactive skills and fashion sense. The rose will test their ability to keep their mouths shut, a skill essential to listening, as any self-help book will attest.
• The Stare-Down. Candidates square off while voters try to distract them with their points of view. Benefit: shows discipline and commitment to dumb party ideology when faced with even the most intelligent and popular alternatives.
• The Buck Stops Here Eating Contest. Candidates wolf down town-deer burgers. Benefit: voters can see a candidate's appetite for 'red meat issues,' and decide if it matches theirs.
• The You Can Leave Your Hat On Strip Tease Contest. Candidates remove clothing to Randy Newman's matchless vamp song (or they can choose Joe Cocker's much flashier version). The outer layer is marked Reason for Running for Office. Subsequent layers reveal Real Reasons for Running for Office, and so on, down to the skivvy big reveal: How Much I Really Care About What You Think. Benefit: voters go to the polls knowing the naked truth.
• The Lab Rat Test. Each candidate is led into a room where voters can see them through one way glass. In the room is a table with a computer on it and a small pile of public comment letters. Will the candidate use the computer to 1. Thoughtfully answer the letters, or 2. Crack a beer and watch YouTube. Benefit: voters know that all of them are going to choose option 2, so at least their viewing choices will be instructive. Note: children will not be allowed at this event.
To illuminate the tax measures on the ballot, a big screen will roll out on which AI generated enactment videos will be projected of the Apocalyptic consequences of voting a tax increase down. And, for balance, other videos will help voters envision the difference between what passing a tax increase will actually achieve as opposed to what it promises. Benefit: voters could see whose hysteria and hallucinations better suit them before trusting government with even more of their money.
Back to reality: some history and a sober evaluation of the DGAD problem
My original critique of McStaffer had a tragic flaw. Here’s why. A couple years ago, concerned that voter fatigue and sparse publicity for so-called Stand Alone Elections (SOE) was depressing turnout, the Idaho legislature banned them. These SOEs are elections held separately from the regular primary/general elections. In some communities, voters were being asked to slog to the polls several times a year, to the point that they felt like the proverbial postman: neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night…
The turnout for the election year following the passage of the SOE ban did indeed show improved voter turnout, which further bolstered my flawed premise. But, despite the jillion times my high school science teachers drilled into me correlation is not causation, I still fell into that trap. Turnout in the May, 2025 Idaho election was abysmal across the state, not just in Valley County. Evidence-based consensus continues to build that the electorate is obsessed with national politics and utterly DGAD about local. To prove it, Wyoming conducted a brave and creative experiment. It allowed municipalities the option to confine all ballot measures to the every-other-year federal election cycle. The cities that did so doubled election turnout over those who stayed with the every year status quo.
This federal obsession is a complete flip from my youth. Tip O’Neill, a Massachusetts liberal and Speaker of the House from 1977 to 1987, said "all politics is local." His axiom was accepted back then as being as true as the earth is round. But even while O'Neill was in power, that ship sailed over the edge of a flat reality. Consider this concluding excerpt of an editorial written by 30-year-old Tom Grote in The Star-News Nov. 7, 1984:
Could it have been that while you were looking at the offerings of reporters and publicists, that you weren't really paying attention to the election until it was too late? And then, after you got outside the polling place, did you run to find a newspaper to find out what all those names were supposed to mean to you? Maybe all that noise you resented all those months was trying to tell you something. Maybe at some point before you voted, you should have opened your brain to the various views offered and made up your mind. There's an election every year, so try to do better next time.
Yowza Tom! Down boy! Sit! Stay! What intrigues me about that passage is that Tom wasn't griping at people not voting (it was a presidential year). He was going all young-man-livid over citizens feeling inconvenienced and annoyed by democracy. In the over 40 years since he wrote that, only one thing has changed. True, an impressive number of Americans still show up for presidential elections. Except now, instead of being bored by democracy, today's electorate depreciates it altogether.
Today's voters vote party, as they have forever. But the candidate no longer represents the successful union of a coalition of ideas. Rather, candidates are cultish, political monotheists. Lydia Justice Edwards, one of Valley County's most colorful residents who served as Idaho State Treasurer, came initially from Kentucky. She liked to joke about her father, a Republican, and her mother, a Democrat, cancelling out each other's vote. It's hard to imagine such a mixed marriage surviving today.
Incidentally, the Wyoming model doesn't work for me. The increased voter turnout isn't worth hamstringing local agencies with a forced every-other-year election cycle.
In the world of my dreams, citizens wouldn't have to be begged to vote. There would be no need for the street fairs of my silly imagination. Citizens would see voting as the precious privilege that the Continental Army fought for, followed by the Union Army, followed by Blacks and Suffragettes. Every July 4th holiday, I knock off a book on America's history to stay connected to what this fragile experiment has survived. This year it was 1776 by David McCullough. I was reacquainted with who fought for American independence and why. They weren’t just commoners. They were lawyers and college graduates and the sons of wealthy farmers and shop keepers. An astonishing number of them were over age 60. They were sick of being pushed around by a regime they saw as tyrannical —and so they put everything on the line to give freer lives to themselves and future generations.
Unlike the British, the American freedom fighters weren't made up of paid foreign mercenaries and conscripted convicts. They were barely paid at all. I marvel at the power of a concept that so captivated rank-and-file men, that many thousands volunteered to walk barefoot and frostbitten through the snow to make it reality. Today as the old Paul Simon song says, a lot of us are looking for America. If citizens today can’t find their way to the voting booth or the mailbox for every election—even in the comfort of warm Sorels and woolen socks—it means that what is being sought today is different than yesterday. The will of the people is being voluntarily whittled down to the wishes of a few. Where does that sound like things are headed to you?
It reminds me of something Benjamin Franklin said that sums all this up with his legendary economy. Ben was asked by a woman, "what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?" To which he replied, "a republic, if we can keep it."
Scroll down for the Afterthoughts after the following commercial breaks:
Links
• Online Polling is Wreaking Havoc on Governance
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Afterthoughts, Observations and Authentications
• To be honest, there were a few other realities in addition to commitment to 'The Cause' that led the troops of the Continental Army to exhibit extreme bravery. They were quite practical. For one, General George insisted that deserters be shot (and he wasn’t keen on pardons). Another was fear that being captured by the British was a fate worse than freezing to death. Coming home in dishonor didn't do much for a man's love-life, or other social/business prospects either. So there was THAT.
• The original idea of dumping Britain was so Americans could occupy their thoughts with something else than the constant outrages of an oppressive government. The Federalists and the anti-Federalists fought bitterly over the size and scope of their new government but both sides militantly agreed on one thing: government should not be big enough to ever take center stage in citizens’ lives again. And look where we are.
• The clear, unnatural pattern of lopsided success Stand Alone Elections had in passing tax measures is what drew attention. Critics made the case that public agencies use advisory committees and other mechanisms to build support bases. At the call to arms, they can instantly mobilize to get their sales pitch out before any citizen opposition can realistically organize. We reported on lots of SOEs in our career and this logic matched our observations.
• I dove into the Star-News archives to research past 'off-year' local elections. It's STAGGERING the amount of money the super-majority DGAD electorate committed itself to by not showing up. What caught my eye was the year the local election was conducted entirely by mail-in ballot due to COVID. Participation shot up 10% from the average. This correlates with other results from around the country. Idaho requires voters to request a mail-in ballot, and more and more citizens are doing so each election. But what if voters didn't have to remember, like they didn't have to in that COVID year? Whatever barriers to voting we can make disappear I am for. Let's mail a ballot to everybody and let them choose whether to return it or vote in person.
Infrequently Asked Questions
• Public servants routinely reject (and roundly resent) the suggestion that they march to their ideological leanings. Humans are self-absorbed machines, just ask God or the moral authority of your choice. Public office bestows coercive power on the holder. That is its attraction and its reward. And that is why, when criticized, so many self-described ‘public servants’ instinctively circle their wagons and train the heavy artillery (mainly paid staff and public funds) on their critics, when they should instead be listening to them. One way they can listen is with more frequent use of the advisory vote. But if a citizen plurality can’t be bothered to vote, that vacuum is filled with the exercise of that coercive power. Hmmmmm.
Well Tomi! you won the jackpot for frustrated columnists everywhere! Problem is I've heard the same arguement forever! The DOGD or what ever it was you determined is exactly right. Wyoming is on to something. Every two years, during federal elections? Let's do it! Oh wait, the school board needs money right now, Cascade needs a 40 million dollar full service hospital to be paid for by 700 or so home owners? You see, if you do it every 2 years some of these snake oil charmers will have to think and put forth realistic plans! Even worse, some folks will have to pay attention and figure out what is happening! I think you are on to something. When it comes to legislation, if someone is doing it right and it works, use it, don't change it? Just me venting as usual.