Where there's a Will, there's a way

One of the issues I raised during this campaign is public participation in county government. I cited the selection of the new voting system as an example where the public should have been invited to participate to a greater extent earlier in the process.

Several months ago I filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the County Clerk to get information about the committee that selected the new voting machines. I wasn't given any public meeting notices or official minutes, as I requested, but I did get a series of meeting "notes" that were informative. I scanned one page of those meeting notes for this blog because it best illustrates my criticisms. You can click on the image below for a larger image of a page I received from the County Clerk's office.

In the January 28, 2005 meeting of the election machine committee there was discussion of a good proposal to allow voters to review competing voting machines and give their feedback. That would have been a good way to invite public opinion, but the committee decided that would be too "confusing" for voters. They further decided not to hold any public demonstrations until the final decision had been made as to which voting system they would select for the voters without their input.

The voting machine committee had competent people, some of whom I know and respect, but this is a course of action that I would have never consented to had I been a member. Because this is a decision that effects all voters in the county, I would have made every effort to encourage more voter participation in reviewing different voting systems.

It was the responsibility of the Election Oversight Committee, chaired by my opponent, and the County Clerk, to ensure the average voter was fully informed and involved in this process. The fact that the election machine committee included a few Democrats did not make it an inclusive process since the average voter wasn't asked for their opinion. After doing a search in the State Journal-Register archives, the first story I could find about this committee was in August of 2005, when their work was nearly completed.

One of my strongest political values is the idea that the public should have as much direct control over the actions of government as possible. This is one example of what I mean when I say that I want to change the way county government operates.