In his foundational essay Second Treatise of Government (1687), John Locke wrote about the necessity of a stable and predictable legal foundation for a society to succeed.
freedom of men under government is, to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society, and made by the legislative power erected in it; a liberty to follow my own will in all things, where the rule prescribes not; and not to be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, arbitrary will of another man: as freedom of nature is, to be under no other restraint but the law of nature.
Capriciousness in a legal system, often found in absolute monarchies or highly socialist and unionzed regimes, results in civil unrest, resource extraction, and socialism for the rich.
I’ve had leadership positions in two local ballot initiatives, and through those efforts I have learned that our county’s Board of Elections (BoE) actualizes John Locke’s vision. The BoE is staffed by management and employees who execute their positions with remarkable dedication. For the recent Question A initiative, they scoured over every one of the 14,000+ signatures on our petitions. That job is extremely tedious, because signatories are signing the petitions on clipboards, so legibility is always a challenge. Once a name and address are deciphered, the data need to be checked for compliance with clearly stated and time-tested rules. The Board of Elections did just that for every signature we submitted.
When the Question A committee challenged the determination that we fell short of the 10,000 required signatures, the BoE accepted the challenge with rapport, sincerity, and a desire to uphold an honest institution’s findings.
My sense is that the BoE embodies everything John Locke demanded for a progressive and stable society, and we all benefit from its dedication.
The other BoE, the Board of Education, is quite the opposite. Every year there is a new “initiative,” a new funding emergency, a new scandal, a new priority, a new union demand—very little of which has anything to do with education. The vote diluters on that BoE are always making comments about who is in the White House, who should be in the White House, who is a king, and who is a transphobe. That BoE, the Board of Education, needs to learn how to serve a constituency from the first BoE, the Board of Elections.
