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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Can anyone explain why the candidates from each voting district for BOE are selected by the voters from all districts instead of their own district?  Is it determined by Maryland constitution or county law?  How about county council?[/quote]
The idea it to make sure candidates come from all over the county - not just Takoma Park - yet still represent the entire county. It reduces the likelihood of members getting too provincial, and encourages them to work towards a common good. [/quote]

...and allows lack of representation for regional viewpoints.  Far from a small-d democratic ideal.  To function, representative democracy must be [i]representative[/i], not some form of majority-tyrrany group-think.[/quote]

Not exactly. From a small-d democratic perspective, the current system is representative in that it represents the will of the majority of voters. Yes the majority of voters live in the east county, but that's only because generations of land use policy have created dense communities in the east county while west county residents have leveraged political power to ensure less density. That raises their home values, but it means there are fewer voters in those communities.

But even if we had a different system, it would not actually solve the problem that you abhor, which is that densely populated parts of the county have more voters than sparsely populated parts.

Even if each "district" had an equal number of voters and each elected their own representative, there would still be more representatives from the desnsely populated parts of the county because the districts would need to be roughly equivalent in terms of number of registered voters. So maybe Bethesda + Chevy Chase equals one district, but so does DTSS because they have the same number of registered voters.

What folks want and are never going to get is a system in which essentially "land votes" in the way it does in the US Senate. That's bad little-d democracy. [/quote]

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