A VIEW FROM THE CHEAP SEATS
By Rich Trzupek
Process and Protest
It happens every two years, like clockwork, in every contested election. It�s a ritual of sorts. Everybody grabs copies of everyone else�s nominating petitions and looks for errors. And, if one party or the other finds them, they protest, asking the authorities to kick their prospective opponents off of the ballot.
Reactions to petition challenges are entirely predictable. The would-be candidates who have had their petitions questioned are �shocked� that anyone would dare try such an �underhanded� trick. More often than not, their campaigns are run by politico types who have done precisely the same thing an election or two ago, but nobody is expected to remember that.
It�s a reaction very much reminiscent of Claude Rains in Casablanca. Rains, you will recall, was �shocked, shocked!� to find out that gambling was going on in Rick�s Place. Then somebody hands Rains his winnings for the evening. �Oh, thank you,� he replies.
In much the same way, campaign managers for candidates who have had their signatures challenged are frequently every bit as offended. How dare anyone question my signatures! they protest.
And then the call comes in: their challenge was successful in another campaign. Fabulous! they cry.
The root of the petition challenge phenomenon is a multi-layered system that requires anyone who wants to run for office to follow a complex set of rules. Signatures may be disallowed because the signer printed their name on a petition, while they signed their voter�s registration in cursive. Addresses must match up. The people who gathered the signatures must properly attest to having gathered them. Everything has to be notarized. Etc.
On one level, we can look at this system and say: �What�s the point? If somebody wants to run, let �em run.�
There is some merit in that, but we should also recognize why such a system was put into place�on a statewide level�in the first place.
People are, justifiably, worried about election fraud. Nobody wants a group of outsiders invading a town, or county, or whatever, and forcing a nomination that the people of that place don�t actually support.
But there�s another benefit to the nominating process, albeit an unintended benefit. It provides a simple test that helps voters determine how willing and able a candidate is to assemble a team qualified to work within a system of government that is even more complex.
Take a guy like Rod McCullough, for example. McCullough is an ex Republican campaign strategist who has recently attached himself to one of two Democrat organizations in Hanover Township (HDTV, to be precise).
Before he became a Democrat hack, McCullough was a Republican hack for a long, long time. As a GOP hack, he was at the center of the Jack Ryan sex scandal, where sealed divorce records were locked to the media. As a Republican strategist, he also was indicted for fraud, for having allegedly forged more than 100 signatures in nominating petitions in a Milton Township race. The candidate he was working for quickly dropped out of the race.
That�s the way the system should work. If you can�t get petitions right, without generating an firggin indictment, how can one be expected to be trusted with public office? One is, and should be, judged by the company one keeps.
The same holds true even when intentional wrong-doing is not an issue. Some candidates simply screw up their petitions, because they don�t understand what is required.
This too is a check and a balance. As complex as the nominating process is, it doesn�t approach the complexity of government.
We have created that monster, every one of us. We may abhor the fact that government is so complex�and your humble correspondent is part of that chorus�but the fact is that government is about as easy to understand as nuclear physics.
We made that choice, because we have decided�through our elected representatives�that everything must be spelled out, to the nth degree. There can be no room for interpretations or intentions. Anyone who has dealt with laws and regulations (which are two very different things, by the way) understands this.
Personally, I earn a living in my day job only because the laws and regulations are so complex. I, and thousands of people like me, are needed because government is just too complicated for the average person to understand. It�s not the way it should be, but it�s the way it is.
The people who represent us need to understand that as well. They can�t just walk into an elected position, determined to do �good things� and expect to make a difference. If they don�t understand how the system works, for good and for ill, they will simply be spinning their wheels.
And that�s where the nomination process provides: an unintentional, but vital, first test. If a prospective representative can�t get that process right, how can he or she be expected to master the much more complex systems that constitute government in 21st America?
That�s not meant to be a defense of the system. It�s rather acknowledgement of the system. If we are going to change it, and we should, step one is understanding it.
End of story.
