RappVoice poll on sheriff’s race suggests a tight race, but why are there no contests in other elections?
By James P. Gannon
For the past three weeks, readers of The Rappahannock Voice have had an opportunity to cast a vote in our online poll for their favorite candidate in the three-way race to be the next sheriff of Rappahannock County.
We’ve been watching the tally almost daily–as we suspect some fervent backers of each candidate have also. By Thursday this week, the poll had surpassed what we consider the magic number, after which any more votes would be meaningless.
The magic number was 2,650. That’s how many real votes were cast by registered Rappahannock voters in the 2003 contest for sheriff between incumbent Larry Sherertz and challenger Steve Butler. Sherertz received 1,512 votes to Butler’s 1,130 votes (with eight votes going to various write-ins.)
We doubt there will be more than 2,650 valid votes cast in this November’s election, so once the total number cast in the RappVoice poll passed that total, it seemed time to cut it off.
At that point in our tally, J.C. Welch had received 980 votes, Chris Williams had tallied 947, and Connie Compton Smith had 683. This doesn’t prove much of anything, other than apparently a lot of people seem interested enough in the contest to vote–which we like to think is the case–or else a few people cared so much that they spent a lot of time and effort voting repeatedly–early and often, as they say in Chicago.
As we cautioned at the outset of this poll, online surveys don’t have the validity of scientific, random sampling of voters done by professional polling firms. Internet surveys of this kind–whether conducted by CNN, Newsweek, RappVoice or any other news website–are not much more than entertainments, and an opportunity to register an opinion. Truth be told, such polls are used to attract traffic to websites–where every click and page-view is coveted.
With all that in mind, we’d caution everyone not to read too much into the “results” of this survey. It does not tell us who is going to win, but the large number of votes cast from this rather small universe of possible voters suggests that we have a highly competitive, closely watched race on our hands. And that is a good thing.
In 2007, Rappahannock County is in the fortunate position of having three qualified, experienced, and capable candidates competing to be sheriff. All three are Rappahannock natives who know the county, its people, its culture and values well; all three have extensive law-enforcement experience. All three appear to have strong constituencies within the community. For a change, this is not an election of the lesser of two evils, but and election asking which is the best of three goods.
For many voters, it may not be easy to make a choice in an election like this. That’s why we have been interviewing the candidates and trying to provide information on their backgrounds, experience, goals and views to give you some basis on which to make a choice. And it’s why we think the candidate forum sponsored by The Rappahannock News, to be held on Tuesday evening, Oct. 2, at the high school, is especially timely and important.
This is the way elections are supposed to be–good candidates, competing for votes, offering voters a real choice.
It is unfortunate that we have no such election in the offing for the county’s Board of Supervisors, nor (except in one district) in the School Board election. All five incumbent supervisors are running for re-election without opposition. They are good and competent men, and perhaps all five deserve re-election. But this is an election only in the sense that the old Soviet Union had elections. There, you could vote for the current boss or not vote. Same deal in Cuba.
We like and respect Bob Anderson, Bryant Lee, Roger Welch, Eddie Wayland and Ron Frazier. But in a democracy, they should have some competition for office, and they have none.
It’s always puzzled us why hardly anyone in Rappahannock County seems willing to challenge an incumbent office-holder. Perhaps it’s just because the community is so small, and the incumbent may be a neighbor or a member of your church or social group, and nobody wants to offend anyone else. Or maybe most people here either just don’t care, or are not willing to take risks or cause controversy.
The same kinds of questions bother us about the School Board election. Four of the five incumbents face no opponents. (Amy Hitt is challenging Wes Mills in Jackson District, and good for her. Perhaps that will spur at least some discussion of school issues there.)
Considering the past couple of years of controversy over the rising school budget, and the public furor it seemed to trigger last spring, why are none of the people who criticize the school management running for a seat on the board that could possibly change things? Where are the tax protesters when it counts?
The public school population is falling, the budget is rising, and the school board seems unconcerned about this. The incumbents rarely ever challenge Superintendent Robert Chappell in their monthly School Board meetings, nor even raise embarrassing questions. At the September meeting, when Chappell revealed that school enrollment had fallen far below his spring estimate, not one member of the School Board even asked why, or suggested that perhaps we ought to study what’s happening here and what its long term consequences are.
Somebody ought to be raising those questions, and if there were challengers in this School Board election, you could expect them to be asking such questions. This is one of the costs of having no-contest elections. There is little public debate of important challenges facing our schools.
So when you go to vote in November, consider the consequences of all those blank spaces under the names of the incumbents. There ought to be choices listed there. At least in the sheriff’s race, voting is not a meaningless exercise.
-- James P. Gannon
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