THE ELECTION COMMITTEE
On setting a bad precedent
When does the campaign for the board begin. Or, more importantly, when should the Election Committee assume responsibility over issues involving possible election campaign violations? As hard as one might believe, that question is not some obscure, hypothetical issue around Sun City. As an interesting aside, in the recently concluded national election, there was a declared candidate for the presidency as early as 2006.
Consider, there are all kinds of possibilities in Sun City:
On gathers that our Election Committee believes themselves to be powerless to do anything about possible violations prior to 4:00 P.M. on 30 January, the close of the registration deadline. After all, as the EC might view matters, we will not know who all of the candidates are prior to that time, although we may know who many of those candidates are prior to that date. I find the Committee’s position strange and ill-conceived in view of the options needing consideration and the potential harm that might result.
Say, hypothetical, prior to January 30th, Ron Johnson is a declared candidate for the board. He might fall into categories 1, 2, 3 or 4, and, or 5. Since Ron knows he’s running in December, he hits the ground running on 1 December with flyers on automobiles and signs placed all over the community promoting his candidacy, while other more ominous flyers attacking potential candidates are sprinkled around and on automobiles.
Ron, knowing full well the value of negative political advertising, develops some quite nasty flyers, which are mailed out to 7,000 homeowners at the same time in an effort to better “inform” the voter pool about the dangers of casting one’s vote for the wrong person. A range of additional dirty tricks are planned, all to be in place prior to 30 January so as not to run afoul of the EC.
Ron gives a sigh of relief and thanks that the EC was powerless to do anything about his aggressive campaign tactics and behavior since his actions took place prior to 30 January. In fact, Ron is especially grateful to the EC for their support in disposing of and in rejecting all those complaints that were lodged against him.
By 30 January, those nasty signs and flyers are gone and Ron will offer an innocuous, unsympathetic apology to anyone who might have been upset. Ron, standing unscathed by any sanctions that the EC might have unleashed had he started his aggressive campaign efforts after 30 January, promises a squeaky clean operation for the next three months until the campaign period ends at the end of April.
Ronald Johnson, January 22, 2009