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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][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]

So basically some rich folks want their vote to count more than other peoples, nothing new there. I'm glad we live in a place where everyone's vote counts.[/quote]

Folks, rich or not, want adequate representation.  Diminishing the equal-weight representation of rich folks is no more just than diminishing the equal-weight representation of poor folks, or racial groups, or religious groups, or the elderly, or the LGBTQIA+, or the differently-abled, or...

MoCo's whole-of-county BOE election paradigm diminishes the liklihood of any minority-viewpoint representation.  FFS, this same problem necessitated rules to redraw districts across the country to better ensure representation of minority interests/viewpoints in public office.  We shouldn't be creating or perpetuating a system that effectively tamps down these views -- a proper representative system would still tend to result in a majority on the board voting with the interests of a majority of the population, just not one that is so lacking in diverse viewpoints and reaonable debate.

Imagine if Montgomery and PG were allowed to vote for state delegates for Garrett County.  Or if Californians could vote for congressional representatives for Montana.  Taken to the extreme, we might as well be voting for a single dictator.

Small-d democracy favors majority opinion, but to function it must allow for effective minority voice in debate.  Pure democracy, in which every issue receives a vote from every member of society, is infeasible for a multitude of reasons, so we approximate with representative democracy.  Small-d democracy in this case by no means means that there should only be the representative voice of the majority.

To the prior poster, who mischaracterized my sentiment -- I have no interest in over-representation of a wealthy few (even beyond the idea of land representation; the narrowly-based Citizens United makes my skin crawl) -- it makes me particularly sad to hear such nonsense from those who claim to be liberal, as most of my sentiments fall that way, and the liberal cause has long championed minority representation.  Absolute power corrupts absolutely.  We shouldn't be justifying such means with our ends.[/quote]

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