Editor’s Note
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Archive for February 6th, 2009

Petition protesting out of hand

1 comment February 6th, 2009

And we wonder why so few people with smarts want to enter public life? Take a look at the “protest” from Rockford resident Luther Landon.

Landon has filed a 46-page objection to the mayor’s candidacy petition filing with the Rockford Board of Elections. He doesn’t want incumbent Larry Morrissey on the ballot for Rockford mayor because, he told the Register Star, “I guess when it comes right down to it, I think that the mayor’s heart and head are in the right place, but he hasn’t gotten anything done.”

Landon’s petition is just the latest in a string of absurd protests filed across Boone and Winnebago counties. Three things are going on:

(1) The election boards have lots and lots of rules for good reason, and lots and lots of absurd rules for no reasons (paper clips, not staples; or is it the other way around?) Simplify the rules. Ditch the dumb ones designed only to frustrate candidates trying to do the right things. And, the arcane rules are fodder for counter-productive protests like Landon’s.

(2)  The arcane rules have been hijacked by party hacks and disgruntled individuals who claim to be righteously (I say self-righteously) following the rules. Well, maybe the letter of the law; surely not the spirit of the law.

(3) And, finally, the crazy rules coupled with the crazy people abusing them will result in crazy(ier) candidates, because no one in his or her right mind would willingly put up with numbers one and two.