School Board elections are being held today across Delaware — polls are open from 10AM til 8PM. Check these sites for details in your county:
Your schools are supposed to be doing something very vital to our society and supposed to be doing that well. They get alot of tax dollars to make that happen. School boards are supposed to oversee that effort and you should be paying close attention to who gets to do that.
Yesterday, the NJ ran an article discussing the low voter participation in school board elections. As usual, the CW that since elections are held in May means that it is harder to attract the attention of voters since this is well outside the usual political season. But there are two things interesting in this article:
1. The accusation that May elections pretty much give a clear field to special interests to dominate the process. Note that these accusations are coming *from* a special interest (Republicans) who have an axe to grind (unions). And I don’t get how — in Delaware — that you get *less* union participation in November than you would in May.
2. That Republicans have taken up the idea that School Board elections should be in November, with all of the other elections. Which is something I agree with. Because May elections essentially wall off the process from pretty much everyone except those who make the effort to insert themselves into the process.
The special interest argument is a canard — every election is dominated by special interests of some type or another. And the NJ should not be in the business of deciding who is a special interest and who is not. On the other hand, one of the things that could help open up the process abit more would be if the NJ would spend more time actually covering School Board races and whatever debates are going on around those elections. I don’t remember seeing much coverage about these elections until this article yesterday — somebody tell me if I’m wrong — and it seems to me that a local newspaper ought to provide some coverage of local elections. So that perhaps people besides *special interests* can get informed and motivated to participate.
So get out and vote today, then come back and tell us what you think the issues are in these school board races. Also tell us what you would think about moving elections to November or of Jea Street’s idea to have the people who live in nominating districts be the only ones who can vote for candidates in that nominating district.