Party protection prevails in race for commissioner
When you visit the polls to vote today, you’ll notice something peculiar.
Five school board seats will be on the ballot in most areas. And you’ll get to cast votes for five candidates.
Multiple council seats are available in every York County borough. And you’ll get to cast a vote for each seat in whichever borough you live.
If your township is electing more than one supervisor, you’ll get to cast more than one vote. Again, you select a favored candidate for each seat.
Then there’s the county commissioners’ race, clearly the most important local race on the ballot in today’s election. We, the voters, will elect three commissioners today. Those three commissioners represent each and every one of us.
Yet we get just two votes.
Ever wonder why?
Apparently, the rule dates back to at least 1874, according to Douglas E. Hill, executive director of the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania. He says it’s designed to make it harder for one party to control all three seats on the board of commissioners.
Presumably, the thinking is that in a county like York, where Republicans outnumber Democrats by a fairly substantial margin, the GOP could put up a write-in candidate in each and every commissioner election. Then voters, armed with three votes instead of two, could give Republicans a clean sweep in the commissioners race.
It’s the same minority party protection philosophy pointed to as the reason there are so few choices on the ballot in a commissioner race — just four candidates for three seats. Allow more than four candidates on the ballot and you might wind up with a board of commissioners with three Republicans or three Democrats.
It’s all hogwash.
I learned long ago that the quality of the candidate means a whole lot more than the letter behind their name in a local election. The commissioners we elect today aren’t going to be voting on funding for the war in Iraq, abortion law or immigration reform, for crying out loud.
And I generally go to the polls on Election Day knowing who I want to see sitting in all three commissioner seats … and knowing who I don’t want on the board. With two votes, what am I supposed to do? Vote for my two favorites? Or try to figure out which of my three favorites are likely to garner the least support and cast votes for them to keep the fourth candidate off the board?
It’s yet another election rule that needs to change.
Otherwise, what’s the message to voters?
Well, the message is clear. In a commissioners’ race — the most important local election – party protection is more important than voters’ opinions.