Re: Equal representation
The Sutter County Board of Supervisors has sent a letter to the assembly in support of Assemblyman James Gallagher’s “equal representation bill,” aka ACA 16. This is a bill brought up and supported by little people who live in little (population-wise) geographic areas who, though they love the wide open spaces, lack lots of people, and would not for the love of anything live in one of those crowded places swarming with people; however, they find they have a problem in their paradise: They feel left out of government.
It is their solution to give some citizens more voting power than some others – that is, do away with the main strength of our democratic form of government, i.e., one person’s vote is equal to any other citizen’s vote. However, their proposed solution is horrible. They propose that voting for the state Senate should be by geographic area and not by one-person-one-vote. In so doing, they are attempting to contravene 2,500 years of precedent.
When the Athenians gathered on the Pnyx to discuss, debate and eventually vote on matters of concern to the city of Athens, the vote was always by voter, not by what part of Athens they lived in. This was the beginning of democracy, and vote by person has remained at the core of democracy ever since.
Now, unfortunately, many of our lawmakers want to overturn democracy and install voting by acreage. So, because they live in a sparsely settled area they claim their vote must count for more than a voter who lives in a large city, or any city for that matter. This type of non-thinking is wrong and defeats the very notion of our government – that is, that all people are equal before the law, and at the polling place.
These advocates of vote-by-acreage complain they are being left out of government, that they are not getting their “fair” share of the state’s largess. Are they completely ignorant of the fact that we, those of us who live in these so-called deprived counties, in reality live in “taker counties” – that is, we receive from governments, both state and federal, more than we contribute to the coffers of government? Their claim that we are deprived is specious and incorrect.
I am disappointed that the Sutter County Board of Supervisors has fallen for Gallagher’s ploy of attracting votes at the cost of democracy.
G. Michael Paine