COMMENTARY
Donn Esmonde: Downsizing trumps voter suppression
Meet Bob Wohlgemuth, victim. Wohlgemuth lives in Alden. He last week put up a lawn sign in favor of downsizing the Town Board. By the next morning, it was gone—taken, with dozens of others, by a town official.
Goodbye, signs. Goodbye, constitutional rights. Hello, anti-downsizing movement.
Wohlgemuth found out what folks in West Seneca, Evans and Orchard Park already knew: You may want to downsize your town board, but town board members—and their political cronies— will not make it easy for you.
We have recently seen board members in four towns place a variety of rocks and roadblocks between people and democracy. The dirty secret: The more town officials try to stop this, and the sleazier their tactics get, the more people who may turn against them.
The move to downsize from five board members to three passed by just 32 votes Tuesday in Alden. The difference may have been a backlash from undecided voters who were ticked off by the sign-pulling tactics of town officials.
“It helped our cause,” said Wohlgemuth, 51, a systems engineer. “I had people who had been undecided tell me, ‘Them doing this made up my mind.’
“You had [town officials] going to war against citizens who just wanted [downsizing] put to a vote. People thought it was wrong.”
Having failed to stop the downsizing juggernaut in four straight towns, town board members have revealed themselves as the Dick Jaurons of local government. The dirty-tricks strategy is not working, but they keep doing the same thing anyway.
The towns change; the tactics stay the same:
• Open only a few polling places—or, in Orchard Park and Alden, just one.
• Limit voting hours, so people cannot stop on their way to work or after dinner.
• Find a ridiculous technicality that —despite the extra expense to taxpayers and inconvenience to voters—supposedly prevents the downsizing vote from taking place on the same day as a primary or general election, when large numbers of people come out.
The theory behind the voter-suppression tactics is that folks with direct connection to town government—and their friends and family—are sure to show up, while everybody else might be inclined to say the heck with it.
• Pass out unsigned fliers that play to people’s fears. One leaflet in Orchard Park claimed that the downsizing movement could “lead to regional schools [and] . . . the elimination of [the] police department.”
What’s next, swine flu and socialism?
More than anything else, the tactics prop up the point that politicians put their interests ahead of our interests. In town after town, board members have tried to stop the people they supposedly represent from having a say in the size of their government.
Maybe it is too much to expect town board members to willingly build their own political gallows. But they should stop pretending that they are not doing everything in their power to fight this.
Next stop: Hamburg. Town Board members already are hinting that the downsizing vote—drumroll, please— cannot be held on same day as the Nov. 3 general election. You do not have to be Karnak to predict that only a few polling places will be open, hours will be limited, and pro-downsizing lawn signs will disappear.
And politicians wonder why people want fewer of them.
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