Our current president has proposed that the United States should "nationalize" its voting system. Click this link to hear the president's spokesperson, Karoline Leavitt, talk about that idea. Click right here to read a New York Times' article that disscusses the topic. This link, which will also access an article from The Times, advises that the president's scheme would represent a "doubling down on unsubstantiated claims that U.S. elections are rigged."
I think it's pretty obvious that the proposal to have our current president "take over" all elections in the United States would be a big step towards tyranny, and I am just a bit worried that some will think that such a "nationalized" voting system would be acceptable.
Let me point out that the nation we live in is called "The United States" for a reason. While governmental efforts to deal with our main problems - and to pursue our main goals - have more and more become "nationalized," with the federal government more and more playing a primary role, even in areas in which "local control" (like education) has always been prized, the nation was founded upon the idea that state governments are primary. Our national government is a "second layer" government. The states are the "first layer," closer to the people and more susceptible to democratic control.
It is always hard - it's a challenge - to maintain citizen control over "government," even in the best of times, and yet maintaining our system of democratic self-government depends on the practical ability of "the people" to make sure that "the government" actually does what the people want. The smaller the unit of government, the easier it is to achieve that democratic goal.
In the end, we won't maintain a system of "self-government" if we, as citizens, are not personally and directly involved in participating in, and closely supervising, the actual operations of government.
I was a local government official for twenty years (elected to serve in that capacity five times). I know, from personal experience, that it is possible for elected officials to be both responsive to those citizen-voters who put them into office, and to be "in charge" of key governmental decisions. But it does take work! As one example of what I'm talking about, let me report that before every meeting of the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors (the Board met, basically, on a weekly basis, and I maintained this practice during the entire twenty years I was in office), I held an open public meeting to receive comments from anyone who wanted to speak to their elected representative directly. Anyone could come and speak to me, face to face - and they did. I handed out the agenda for the upcoming Board meeting, and let those in attendance ask questions, and make comments. That's one way that I kept in touch with the ordinary people in my community who are supposed to be "in charge" of the government - the government that is supposed to do what "we, the people," want it to do.
Elected officials who let non-elected governmental bureaucracies set the agenda and implement policy are not doing their job. But.... let's not fault those elected officials for their dereliction. We, the people, are the ones who are mainly derelict, if we let unelected bureaucrats make all the big decisions.
"Nationalizing" our elections would be a big step in the wrong direction. Let's not allow ourselves be fooled!
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