How Entitled Should Voter Registration Employees Feel?

People use sunshine laws to retaliate against political opponents (it’s easy to find technical violations and use them to show an opponent is not being open; and you don’t even have to find them: newspapers write up baseless allegations just the same).

But it is rare that sunshine laws lead to fisticuffs. According to the <a href="http://www.thestarpress.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080411/NEWS01/…; target="”_blank”"><i>Star Press</i></a> of East Central Indiana, this did happen last Wednesday in Delaware County, Indiana, home of Muncie.

An appointed county voter registration office worker was arrested for having attacked not someone he felt broke the state’s sunshine law, but a reporter who did not challenge the legality of a county election board meeting due to allegedly insufficient notice. The board chair considered it an “emergency meeting.”

The alleged assailant also happened to be secretary of a Delaware County party committee.

<a href="http://www.cityethics.org/node/413">Click here to read the rest of this blog entry.</a>

This makes one wonder whether party people should be appointed to voter registration jobs. It’s typical for registrars to be political appointments, but isn’t there a conflict of interest here? Shouldn’t such employees be seen as neutral and fair? And shouldn’t they see themselves not as someone entitled to his position, but rather as just another county employee or, even better, as someone who has to look fair?

Would an employee who didn’t feel somehow entitled ever think of striking a reporter, especially one who had written nothing bad about the employee?

Here’s how he defended his actions:

“It wouldn’t have happened if you [the newspaper] hadn’t promoted it. When you promote illegal activities, there are ramifications. ... I was wrong in what I did, but at some point there’s got to be an attention-getter.”

You see, a party committee secretary is incapable of getting his committee to file a complaint, or writing a letter to the editor, or making a public statement at the next meeting. A party committee secretary is entitled to take the law in his own hands and get immediate attention for his cause. And he succeeded.

But he also got immediate attention for another cause: the cause of having neutral voter registration employees. I realize that this is like asking for neutral sports fans, but it should be like asking for neutral referees.

Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics