Not until we develop a vaccine that either prevents politicians from lying or allows people to know a lie when they hear, it will our elections ever be fair or honest.
Most politicians, not all, are by their nature disingenuous and, at the very least, hyperbolic, with a propensity for massaging the truth and the inconvenient facts to help serve their preferred political narratives. Is utilizing such tactics to manifest the election results you are seeking, honest? Or fair? You can decide for yourself. Ok fine, the no-good rotten bastards are lying sacks of cow dung.
However, with respect to elections being fair, let me say that fairness is in the eye of the beholder. Is it fair that some voters receive special treatment and favor from city and county elections divisions, which frequently increase turnout in particular areas or among certain demographics in the community?
Do you suppose those sections of the community that are on the receiving end of special attention by these election divisions, including juicing voter turnout, are drawn randomly or by happenstance? If you believe that, you might acquaint yourself with Gerrymandering, which involves redrawing electoral district boundaries to favor a particular political party or group.
In other words, by manipulating district lines, and election offices, with the protection of the partisan hyper-partisan elected officials they often work for, can concentrate or dilute the voting power of certain communities. Is that fair? Or honest?
Speaking of which, has anybody spent any time looking into how easy some local governments make getting local students on university campuses to the polls on election day? This is the opposite of voter suppression. It is voter empowerment, and I don’t mean that in a good way.
Do you suppose the same proactive effort to get certain demographic groups to the polling booth is expended when it comes to wealthy residential neighborhoods that vote differently from college students? Especially those who think Greta Thunberg is a righteous chick?
Why do you suppose that is? I can give you a hint:
In Santa Barbara County, even though the majority of registered voters are Democrats, undergraduate students at UCSB vote monolithically, and, as you’d expect, they vote overwhelmingly for Democrats. It is not untypical for the students in Isla Vista to deliver 10,000 to 15,000 votes, or even more, for a single candidate, or for or against an initiative they favor or oppose. On election day, at least long before COVID, you couldn’t swing a dead rat at UCSB without hitting a polling booth.
Back in the early 90’s and even into the early 2000’s, before the elected Democrat elections chief retired, students in Isla Vista, who attended UCSB, typically decided the fate of elections in Santa Barbara County. Under County Clerk KEn Pettit’s questionable election regime, the kids needed simply to roll out of bed at noon or later, walk out their door into the hallway of their dormitory where a polling booth was set up on each floor waiting for their, er, rubber stamp.
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I’ve spent the last 30 years in and around local and state government in California, and I can say without fear of contradiction that most public bureaucracies in this state are inherently inefficient and often even corrupt. Why? Because government is inherently inefficient, and unchecked one-party political power corrupts.
Does that mean I endorse the elimination of democracy or our republican form of government? No.
But what I am prepared to say and to endorse unequivocally, unambiguously, and enthusiastically, is a better-informed body politic, and a much better class of politicians is needed. Preferably ones who adhere to some semblance of political ethics and voter integrity.
But then, I also endorse nothing other than warm, sunny days year-round. In other words, it’s never going to happen.
