Your most important vote (Gettysburg Times op-ed)
Take a drive around Cumberland Township right now and you will see signs asking you to oppose some new apartments being proposed. A while back, Highland Township featured signs in folks’ yards asking that you keep Highland Township rural. Solar farm projects are being argued about in Straban and Mt. Joy Townships among others. School boards around the county, and indeed the country, are fighting over what are appropriate books for kids to read and have access to. The local prison and different human service agencies occasionally make the news.
What do these issues all have in common? They will ultimately be decided by locally elected officials in elections happening this year. And these officials are the politicians closest to us.
Lots of people vote in presidential elections. In 2020, 66.8% of people 18 years of age and older voted for President. That is great! But a Portland State University study found that fewer than 15% of eligible voters usually turn out for local elections such as school boards, borough council members, township supervisors and county commissioners. This low turnout means that important local issues are decided by a very small number of voters. And these are the issues most likely to personally impact you. Issues such as new apartments being built, zoning changes that may affect the value of your property, books your kids can read and a host of others.
A study conducted in 2018 by Johns Hopkins University sadly noted that a lot of Americans were not aware of how their local government actually worked. Less than 30% knew what level of government handles law enforcement and who was in charge of zoning for example. These are two things that directly impact us every day in our neighborhoods. Think about it, 70% of us do not even know how local government works. Yet we continue to be uninformed and we do not go vote for those who most affect us.
Turn on your television any time of any day and you will see talking heads yammering on and on about national issues. Many of these issues will take a long time to affect your life. Unlike new apartments, bad roads, lack of good snow removal and on and on. Locally, our media does the best it can to cover local issues but admittedly, it is tough to stay informed about exactly what your local municipality might be up to. Usually, only when something is perceived to have “gone wrong” do we get involved in local politics and issues. Maybe there is a better way. We can start by learning about our local government and voting for those important local officials.
Democracy only works when our voices are heard. Our attitude towards the importance of local elections is where this can begin. We should all pay more attention to local elections and take the time to learn about the stances of local candidates and propositions.
Local elections have real and noticeable consequences. Local officials have most of the control over our infrastructure such as good drinking water, functioning sewer systems, potholes, bridges that do not fall into the streams below them and a long list of others. These things usually affect you much more on a daily basis than anything the president or Congress does. Not that you should not vote in presidential elections, rather you should vote more frequently in local elections.
Apathy and low turnout cannot continue to define local elections. We should research our local candidates and their positions on issues that they directly control. How a candidate for township supervisor feels about abortion, for example, does not really matter. Township supervisors cannot do anything about that issue. How they feel about recycling makes a much bigger difference.
One way to be better informed is to attend a local government meeting sometime before you have a complaint or a major concern. Almost every borough and township in Adams County have continuing needs for people to serve on planning and zoning commissions, sewer authorities and numerous other boards and committees. These are the deliberations and decisions that most directly impact your daily life.
It is easy in today’s world to get depressed about the state of our national politics. Who among us has not become very frustrated in the past six or seven years, regardless of where you stand on national issues. Getting involved locally allows you to be optimistic when you see your friends and neighbors holding thoughtful deliberations at the local level.
So go vote in the primary election and in the election this fall. (Members of one local party may need to write in some candidates.) But, please go vote. It is important.
Thanks to the National Geographic Society and the Harvard Business Review for the inspiration for this column.
Steve Niebler is a member of Gettysburg DFA Government Accountability Task Force and the immediate past chairman of the Adams County Housing Authority Board.