The people of District 3 in Jefferson County have been disenfranchised from the Board of County Commissioners for some time now. The question for today is whether their voice will continue to be disregarded by the Port Townsend political elite.
I say disenfranchised because four years ago, the people who actually live in District 3 voted to elect Daniel Toepper to the BoCC over Democrat Kathleen Kler by a 52% – 48% margin. Unfortunately, their votes were cancelled by Port Townsend voters and others who do not live in the district, resulting in Kler being seated as a commissioner and solidifying one-party rule in Jefferson County.
Some people defend the practice of allowing voters from outside District 3 to determine who will represent the people of District 3 on the pretext that the County Commission represents everyone in Jefferson County. It is a dishonest position. It is no less absurd than arguing that we on the Olympic Peninsula should be allowed to vote in a congressional election in Pennsylvania or a U.S. Senate race in Missouri because Congress represents all Americans.
This is an issue that’s been chewed on periodically in recent years, but for the here and now, the question is whether the people of District 3 will be disenfranchised again in 2018. It’s entirely possible and a betting man would say it is probable.
Voter participation in the 2018 primary election for District 3 County Commissioner was far more robust than it was four years ago. District 3 voters cast 1,039 more ballots in the July 7 primary than in the 2014 primary, with Republican Jon Cooke winning the lion’s share. Granted, the Democrat primary vote was split between three other candidates but given the conservative leanings of Craig Durgan and disaffected Democrats who voted for Ryan McAllister, there is a path to victory for Cooke among the people of District 3.
Sadly for the people who live in District 3, their votes are likely to be wiped out by the 11 precincts in Port Townsend, where Kler defeated Toepper by a whopping 71% – 29% margin four years ago. The needs and interests of District 3 are vastly different from those of Port Townsend but it is likely that urban, wealthier liberals will determine who represents the far-flung rural and remote areas of Jefferson County that comprise District 3.
This fact illustrates the hypocrisy of our current slate of county commissioners. They opine about needing to maintain the rural nature of Jefferson County as they seek to close down the local gun range and prevent others from opening through a heavy handed ordinance aimed at furthering the gun control agenda of Seattle, New York City and points in between.
We heard similar arguments about preserving the rural nature of south county during the Brinnon Master Planned Resort debate. Setting aside for a moment the relative merits of the Brinnon resort project, it’s an amplification of the phoniness of commissioners who claim to revere the rural nature of our county while allowing Port Townsend to determine the collective fate of the people who live in District 3.
We like to think of ourselves as a representative democracy but in truth, Jefferson County is not. The one-party rule under which we live is closer to totalitarianism than democracy. When people are denied the basic right to determine their representative in county government, it is not democracy. It is a corruption of the election rights of people who live in a different way and a different place than those who would dictate to others how they should live their lives.
Perhaps the 2018 election will reignite the Home Rule Charter effort we saw in 2013. Time will tell. But for now, the taxpayers of District 3 should be prepared to be ignored for another four years.
Related: Jefferson County’s Fake Democracy
Scott Hogenson is a prize-winning journalist who has been a member of the academic staff at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he lectured in the School of Journalism and served as managing editor for the Wisconsin Public Radio News Network. Scott has also been a contributing editor for National Public Radio in Washington, D.C., a broadcast editor for United Press International, and a news director for radio stations in Virginia and Texas.
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