Over-the-top administration?
Iread with growing dismay and with an increasing sense of fear the article in The New Mexican about Angel Peña’s “hassle” in trying to run as a Democrat for Congress in Doña Ana County (“Candidate off ballot for effort to replace stray tilde,” Feb. 27).
The problem was that the tilde accent over the “n” in his name gave problems to the printing machine used to produce the 623 supporting signatures Peña needed to qualify being on the ballot. The machine couldn’t translate the tilde and consequently butchered his last name as well as “Doña Ana County,” which also was on the form. His supporters valiantly tried to correct the errors manually, but the collective wisdom of the Secretary of State’s Office and a Santa Fe court judge decided that Peña’s list of 773 signatures, 150 more than he needed, didn’t qualify him as a candidate because a bunch of them had the missing tilde corrected by hand. There was clearly no wrongdoing intended.
This is the sort of administrative nonsense that seems to be increasingly occurring in our society. The recent unacceptable and unjustifiable practices of New Mexico’s Motor Vehicle Division in presenting unnecessary and variable barriers to folks just trying to get their driver’s licenses renewed is another example. These very uncivil servants seem to believe that their task is to obstruct the very citizens they are paid by from achieving their very legitimate objectives.
Add to the above the newly encouraged punitive and possibly illegal attitudes of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the civil asset forfeiture practices of the police and the Internal Revenue Service, and a disturbing picture of American emerges that is increasingly reminiscent of Nazi Germany, communist East Germany, Stalinist Russia, presentday Myanmar and any other totalitarian regime in history.
We are not there yet, of course, but the signs are not good. This is not the “Shining City upon a Hill.” Where are we headed and what can we do to reverse course? A good start would be a timely reminder to those who are in “public service” as to what that really means. It means “serving the public,” not victimizing us.
David King was born in the United Kingdom and is a retired IT executive, former small airplane pilot, volunteer news announcer on KSFR Public Radio and a Santa Fe resident.