Wednesday, August 1, 2001

Imagine you're the boss, trying to hire a new worker for the business. Some candidates come to interview, but you cannot ask them questions. They only tell you what they want you to know, and you've got to pick the candidate you think is best from whatever you can glean from short visits they pay you at their convenience.

Screwy system? That's exactly what we've got when we choose elected officials, especially at the local level. Do we know about their education? Their work record? And even their criminal record?

A few years ago, a person who just a short time before had been sued for fraud by a business partner, had conveyed his real estate to family members, and then had filed for bankruptcy, decided to run for Fayette county commissioner. The lawsuit, the land transfers, the bankruptcy, all of this was officially on the public record, but not a word leaked out to the voting public. He wasn't elected that time, but we've got to ask ourselves whether our votes are intelligent votes when we're kept in the dark about the candidates.

So what information should we, as voters, be entitled to? Here's a list. (1) We should have a full recital of a candidate's formal education, including degrees, institutions, dates and places. (2) We should have a description of a candidate's work experience, with employer names, dates, titles and responsibilities. (3) We should be informed of any criminal record the candidate may have, with arrest places and dates, charges, and disposition. That includes DUIs and traffic offenses. (4) We should have a candidate's history of litigation involving lawsuits where he may have been charged with fraud, theft, mismanagement, tax underpayment, and of course bankruptcy and even sexual harassment.

Why should we want this information? Because, quite simply, it is relevant. Looking at our local Fayette County government, for instance, we're hiring commissioners who handle a budget of $65 million of our tax dollars, and Board of Education members who handle about $125 million. Do we want to entrust the management of our tax money to a person who could manage his own money so poorly he ended up in bankruptcy? Or to a person who consistently disrespects the law?

We, the voters, are the boss. Like an 800-pound gorilla, we can do anything we want, and elect anybody we want. It helps keep the candidates humble. Elect a wrestler as governor, for instance, and see if that doesn't catch the professional politicos' attention. But we are not gorillas, for we're supposedly intelligent. We need the kind of information an intelligent employer would want before hiring an employee.

Is there some information we don't want? Yes. Religion is the first item that comes to mind. Both our federal and our Georgia constitutions state that religion cannot be a consideration in government employment. Yet we have many candidates who seek to exploit religion by trumpeting their affiliation, usually with mainline "majority" religions in their area. To hear them talk, they're all Sunday school teachers. A few years ago I encountered a candidate who, in his election materials, boasted of being a member of a particular church. After the election, a very active long-time member of that church, who knew everybody in it, told me that the candidate (who was elected) had never even been seen at that church.

I shouldn't have to say that race is also an irrelevant consideration, and we know the real motives of many who would show a picture of themselves next to a picture of their opponent. Another suspect bit of information is place of birth. In Fayette County, where there was no hospital until about five years ago, you couldn't possibly truthfully claim to have been born in Fayette County unless you were born at home (in a log cabin, I suppose).

Reports of campaign contributors and contribution amounts are available at the county Board of Elections office, but we don't seem to have anybody go look this up and disseminate the information. Why the newspapers don't do it is beyond me. American history teaches us that newspapers used to play an important part in the political life of the country, but apathy now seems to rule there too. To know who supports the candidates, and to what extent, is of obvious importance. The average voter can't be expected to trek to Board of Elections offices to look this up: that information is there for the news media to look up and analyze for the benefit of the voters. They should do their job.

Under the current system, information that is unfairly prejudicial (religion, race) or largely unneeded (like children) is substituted for substantive basic information like education and work experience. Reforming the financing of election campaigns will not solve the problem at all. We need a Voters' Bill of Rights that provides for disclosure and dissemination of basic information on the candidates. Just imagine the difference it would make if, well before going to the polls, we were all provided a booklet for each position to be voted on, showing, side by side, the name and relevant background of each candidate. The current system is designed to make it hard to make comparisons, as each candidate generally avoids even mentioning his opponents' names, deviously hoping to make it in through name recognition brought on through saturation advertising.

An election should not be a people-fooling exercise. We should take the deviousness and hypocrisy out of the current system, and bring on the hard facts that can enable the voters to make meaningful comparisons between the candidates.

Before they issue a new insurance policy that might commit them to paying out large sums of money, insurance companies get "inspection reports" from commercial services whose business it is to collect information on the people who want insurance. If you want automobile insurance, the insurance company wants to know what kind of driving record you have. If you want a million dollars of life insurance, the insurance company wants to know something of your lifestyle. That sounds reasonable. Why shouldn't the public do the same with political candidates who apply for a public office and might likewise commit the taxpayers to paying out large sums of money?

I have long thought that the first step to campaign reform was to give the politicians no money, which would prevent our landscapes from being despoiled with yard signs and billboards, our newspapers, mailboxes and windshields cluttered with meaningless "vote for me" ads, and our airwaves polluted by political commercials. Mistakenly listening to devious amoral advisers who specialize in people manipulation, the candidates withhold the information we need and use the money to feed us information we don't need. Large corporations, who are also amoral (because, in the words of 18th century British jurist Sir William Blackstone, they have neither a body to be kicked nor a soul to be damned), throw away tons of money to facilitate the misinformation that currently characterizes political campaigns.

We, the voters, need respect. We need relevant information. And we won't achieve that unless we insist upon and get a Voters' Bill of Rights. Let's see if we will ever find candidates who will offer us what we truly need.

Claude Y. Paquin

Fayetteville

cypaquin@msn.com

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