Saturday, January 14, 2006

Board of Education election districting

I am tired of hearing the absolute B.S. reasonings behind not wanting to go to districts in electing members of the County Board of Education. All of the board members are elected "at large" in the county. That means that if the western portion of the county continues to grow at its current pace, the vast majority of the board members could be from that area, thus leaving less populated regions of the county, such as in eastern and northern Johnston County with little or no representation.

The problem, as seen by many vocal ethnic minorities is that the changing to district elections will lessen the possibility of "minority representation" on the board. First, representatives are elected by MAJORITY vote, not minority. They are called minorities for a reason. 12% of the population should not dictate what the remaining percentage of the population does, how they vote, or have more than 12% of the seats on the board just because they would possibly "lack minority representation". We live in a representative republic (we never have been a democracy and I am tired of hearing people refer to our system of government as democracy). The whole idea behind a republic is that elected representatives are sent to a governing body on behalf of the constituancy.

If you really want to talk about minority representation, try talking about the areas of the county that have NO representation at all. That is my biggest complaint about the municipal elections here in Selma.

If a "minority" candidate is good enough and deserves the vote of the represented, he/she will get elected. To expect that someone will be elected simply because of the color of his/her skin or the alleged need for representation by an ethnic minority is very contrary to the message propagated by Martin Luther King (see next post). My simple advice to minorities is simply to quit whining, learn the system instead of demanding that it bend to your whims, become BETTER than those you oppose, and compete on the same playing field with superiority. I just watched the Denver Broncos do just that to the New England Patriots :^(

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