IN CATOOSA, LET PEOPLE DECIDE

When Georgia overhauled some of its voting laws in 2021, the hue and cry about voter suppression rang out from leftists in the smallest Peach State counties to the White House.

Subsequent elections put a lie to the charges with record numbers of people voting, but the hollow accusations are still made from time to time by those who should know better.

But closer to Chattanooga, actual voter suppression was on display last week when the Catoosa County Republican Party rejected three Republican incumbents and one former Republican office-holder from qualifying for the May primary election.

Their rejection, according to the county party, was because they failed to adhere to the state party’s 20-point platform. One of the charges by a proponent of the rejections was — we kid you not — for restricting property rights by regulating backyard chickens.

A Superior Court judge temporarily ruled in favor of the candidates Tuesday, but a hearing on the matter will be set within 30 days.

Look, we get that party adherents get upset with people who are elected and make decisions in office that seem to go against what they’ve promised, what the party platform says or what the majority of party members want. We want them to vote or take action that is in the best interests of the people. But we’re not in their shoes. We don’t see what they see. We don’t have easy access to the information they do. We don’t have the advice they receive on why they should vote one way or the other.

So when someone refers to an elected official who has voted or taken action that in some ways goes against what they’ve said or promised in the past, they may as well be talking about every single person who has ever been elected to every office in the history of the country. Presidents to school board members. Democrats and Republicans.

After all, financial situations change, pandemics happen, revenue shortfalls occur. Office-holders should endeavor to do what they say they’ll do, but it should not be the purview of a very small number of party officials to determine how far one office-holder or another may have strayed from every jot and tittle in a state party platform. Shouldn’t that be the electorate’s responsibility?

In the case of Catoosa County, if voters recognize what the excluding party committee concluded was true, and the four candidates are not representing the GOP as well as a newcomer might pledge to do, they will not vote for them. That, it seems to us, is the way United States voters throughout history have made their choices.

Let’s take a couple of tenets in the Georgia state party platform, for example.

No. 5 in the list states: “We believe in the right to life from conception, beginning at fertilization, to natural death.”

Local candidates are not likely to have anything whatsoever to do with right-to-life questions, but it’s certainly possible, isn’t it, for a pragmatic candidate to hold strict pro-life views but to believe that the state legislature should give some credence to the majority of Georgia voters who believe there should be exceptions to a strict abortion prohibition? That doesn’t change a candidate’s view, but it does at least acknowledge the entire electorate of the state. Should that eliminate one from the ballot?

Or, No. 6 in the list states: “We believe that the right to self-defense is a God-given right, recognized by the Second Amendment.”

Traditionally, county commission candidates have little to no say-so about the right to self-defense, those laws being established by the state. But isn’t it possible for a candidate to believe strongly in the Second Amendment, yet believe it is possible there are some measures that might stop the proliferation of gun violence? Their ideas may range from red flag-type laws to registration requirements for gun shows or personal sales. It doesn’t change a candidate’s view on the importance of the Second Amendment, but it does offer understanding that a reduction in weapons crime on the state level might require some tweaks. Are those candidateeliminating considerations?

Catoosa County voters know the rejected candidates, County Commission Chair Larry Black, District 3 Commissioner Vanita Hullander, District 1 Commissioner Jeff Long and former Commission Chair Steve Henry. If they qualify in every proper way, except in the particular feelings of a small party committee, put them on the ballot and let we the people decide. Every once in a while we get one wrong, and now and again one disappoints us, but we’ve gotten most of them right for more than 200 years.