Samantha never once committed larceny. She routinely writes Twitter posts denouncing the crime and anyone who commits it.
Julie committed larceny once, was apprehended, did 60 days in jail, and is fully reformed. She openly denounces the crime and its perpetrators, but from a position of repentance. She can (and should) serve as a mentor to others regarding the personal consequences of committing the crime.
Suzie is living in a Potomac mansion with three Lamborghinis in the driveway. Her source of income is imperceptibly skimming off Medicare payments, a scam that has been doing her well for a decade. Suzie also routinely appears on MC Media’s Police/Crime/Fire page denouncing all sorts of criminals.
Which of these three hypothetical ladies behave morally? The first two. In contrast, Suzie is behaving immorally and hypocritically, because she is an active criminal denouncing criminals.
Suzie’s situation perfectly reflects the nature of our local at-large elected officials who participated in the No Kings demonstrations on October 18. In particular, County Executive candidate Evan Glass participated in the event and reported on it in an email.
Recall Mr. Glass and three other members of the County Council are elected at-large. None of these at-large members ever won a majority vote in the Democratic primaries, meaning that most Democrats do not want them to advance to the general election. Furthermore, Supreme Court justices Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Thurgood Marshall, Earl Warren (and many others) have excoriated at-large voting because a small group of voters elects 100% of the winners. In a county with 65% registered Democrats, we would expect at least one at-large member over the past 30 years be a Republican or independent, but it never is the case. In fact, it was only in 2022 when an at-large representative living above the Beltway was first elected, even though 60% of the voters live in that area. These results prove why at-large voting is vote dilution.
The vote dilution with the Board of Education is even worse. BoE members Stewart, Yang, Wolff, Rivera-Oven, and Zimmerman “represent” districts, but they are all elected at-large—their names appear on more ballots outside their districts than inside. Because they are all elected at-large, a small number of voters elects all of them.
Yet some of these at-large vote diluters show up at the No Kings rallies demanding, as Mr. Glass says, “democracy only works when everyone has a voice.”
Mr. Glass is part of an at-large oligarchy that denies most people a voice in local elections due to vote dilution, yet he exhorts democracy works when everyone has a voice. That sounds awfully like our hypothetical Suzie and her hypocrisy.
I could be wrong. Perhaps Mr. Glass and the seven BoE members can provide justification for plurality wins and at-large voting.
