Make your vote count

We have a republican form of government in this country. That means we choose our leaders by voting, and the winners will hopefully represent our interests when they're put in office.

So it's really all about choice. Critics of the modern American political system claim our choices are clouded by emotion or political ideology, or that voters are manipulated by mass media technicians.

Voters who want to be known as careful, thoughtful and independent must make the effort to study the candidates and not be swayed by roadside signs, TV sound bites or sloganeering.

That's going to be really difficult this year. Besides the dozen county commissioner candidates and numerous legislative races across the county, voters in the Flathead will be looking at four candidates for a brand new position — a second Justice of the Peace — and they will be picking a new sheriff for the first time in eight years.

To simplify matters, voters can divide up the task into two broad steps — look at the candidate as a person and look at the candidate's politics.

Voters need to ask themselves if the candidate has the experience and education to do the job he is running for. That's not a slam-dunk decision — Abraham Lincoln made an able president without a portfolio of advanced degrees, and some types of experience are transferable from one job to another. But managing a business is not the same as representing the people in government.

Perhaps most important for voters is whether they feel they can trust a candidate. If a candidate avoids questions or presents vague solutions, or if a candidate seems to have all the answers and makes grand promises, then voters will have to decide if he is believable.

This is particularly true for candidates with revolutionary visions. Voters might want to view promises of instant solutions to endemic problems with a degree of skepticism, especially if candidates say it's time to throw out the old guard and bring in the new. That's not exactly a morale booster for the workers who remain behind after a new boss is elected.

Voters should consider that the person they choose for commissioner or sheriff will be in management positions, that the person they choose for Justice of the Peace will be deciding people's futures from the bench, and the person they choose for the legislature will have to show up in Helena for long hours and get along with other legislators.

What a candidate offers as solutions is the political half of voting. A fiscal conservative will want to cut — or at least hold the line on — taxes. A progressive will want to spend money to improve social programs. A moderate will want to find the middle ground.

Nearly every candidate the Pilot has talked with this year points to rapid growth in the Flathead as a strong reason for running — from roads needing paving and infrastructure spread thin to rising crime and the need for more jail beds or alternative sentencing.

Most of the commissioner candidates came across as moderates — they seem to want more planning and more regulations. This is a major paradigm shift from the property rights revolution that took hold of county politics a dozen years ago — zoning was rejected in place after place across the county, and eventually the regional planning office was eliminated.

Voters need to scrutinize solutions offered by candidates to see if they're realistic. If they promise to cut taxes while at the same time calling for programs that cost money and manpower, ask how that's possible.

If they promise to open up the roads or increase timber harvest on federal lands, ask how local or state officials can order around federal land managers. Local and state officials can try to influence the federal government to modify management policies, but that process could take years and require an impressive lobbying effort in Washington, D.C.

If they promise to put criminals in tent cities and make them clean up the county's roads or recycle garbage, ask how people who have been arrested but not yet convicted of a crime can be ordered to do these things, or how a sheriff or judge can enforce penalties that have not been created by the legislature.

Lastly, voters need to keep a close eye on the races that will be decided next week — not in November. Whoever wins the sheriff's race in the primary is the sheriff all the way to 2010. The same is true for county superintendent of schools.

Also to be decided June 6 is a two-mill levy for a countywide mosquito-control program and a three-mill levy for a new juvenile detention center. A ballot question on how roadless lands in the Flathead National Forest should be managed will also be presented to voters.

The Pilot does not recommend that voters follow the adage "vote early and vote often," but we recommend that they vote — and vote wisely.