If You Ask Me/By Martha Knight

Some years back there was another organization in Port that used to host Meet the Candidates forums. Recently a longtime local resident and voter reminded me that this was the custom.

Nowadays the GOP Ladies perform a fine service in presenting the Republican candidates, every other year, but it would be nice to have an event in which Republican, Democratic and other candidates could present themselves and voters could size them up.

Who would sponsor it? Since we are not so very partisan, locally, why not either party, or both? GOP Ladies, Dem Ladies (if we had such a group) or a combination of both? Port Allegany Women's Club? Rotary?

With this year's bumper crop of school board candidates, nine in all, it would have been helpful to have all of them presented at a forum just for school board hopefuls. Next time around, maybe that will happen. Who might host such an event? Maybe the Elementary Boosters? The Academic Improvement Committee? Some other civic organization?

There are four school board seats to be filled by election this year. Four of the nine candidates will make it, and five won't. But those five will get some support; they had enough signers of their nominating petitions to at least get on the ballot. So they should accept their defeat as a temporary set-back, and plan to run again two years hence, when there will be five school board positions up for election.

Recalling a couple more smiles from the recent candidates' forum, I found it instructive when Peggy Kallenborn recommended that people get absentee ballots in advance of the primary election. “Maybe, when May 21 comes, you won't be here,” she pointed out.

Sensible advice, I thought. Probably Peggy did not mean it in the morbid sense.

It is said that there are two things we can be sure of. In her talk at the forum, Pat Payne reminded us of both. She mentioned that she does see many of us twice a year when we pay our property and per capita taxes. She assured us that she enjoys those encounters. (We are glad to have a pleasant and helpful person assisting us with an otherwise unwelcome duty.)

But, she added with a touch of pathos, then there comes the time when this taxpayer or that does not make the usual pilgrimage to her office, or send the required remittance. We understood that she was referring to the situations when the OTHER immutable event has occurred. The tax harvest has been pre-empted by that grimmest of reapers. Ah, well. The property lives on. Someone will pay taxes on it.

As the primary election looms, I remind my fellow voters that primaries might seem unimportant compared to the November “real” election--but actually, they can be more so.

Many elections are settled in the primary. Around here, winning the Republican primary can be tantamount to being elected.

This may not be the case in the townships, where Democrats have been known to get elected, and where we have seen a successful fall write-in now and then. Republicans do predominate in the borough council, and definitely have the edge in county offices.

Register with a party! There is no advantage to being an independent in the sense of not registering as a member of a party. It does not make an elector (someone qualified and registered to vote) one whit more independent as to his or her choices!

Persons not registered with a party are not able to vote in the primary! And the primary is where we are likely to see choices whittled down to the point we will have few actual decisions to make at the polls in November. Why sit out such an important opportunity to have a say?

At least, as a party member, you get to participate in the primary! You may feel that you do not want to support a party or its platform right down the line. Okay, can't argue with that. I disagree with some of my party's leaders a good deal of the time. Nowhere is it written that by being a registered whichever you are bound to vote for that  brand's candidates no matter what! In the fall election, vote for any, or all, or none of them. Cross party lines freely then, vote independent, write in someone else.

As a party member you can vote in the primary, and that means you can vote in what may be the “real” school board election.

That's because school boards are presumed to be so immune to partisan politics, party doesn't matter, so people who run for school board are allowed to “cross file,” or file nomination petitions of both parties. And most do.

Many times there are no more people running for school board than there are positions (two years ago it was five), so those people will get elected whether or not they cross file. This year two candidates did not cross file, and if one does win her party's nomination we are likely to have five candidates competing for four seats, come November. If both win their (different) parties' nominations Tuesday, we will have six candidates in November. Cross filing was important, this time around.

The same quirk in law pertains to judicial elections, by the way.

Anyway, the word from here is, enroll in a party and vote in its primaries.

Also, if you want to pull particularly hard for a certain candidate in a crowded field, or maybe two, such as your top pick or two picks for school board, “target” your candidate(s). Vote only for him or her or those two, and do not help any of their opponents, even if that means throwing away two or three of the school board votes you are allowed. You help your candidate(s) most by NOT helping any of his/her/their opponents.

But, by the time you read this, such strategies can be applied only in the NEXT election!

Peace.

Drymar@gmail.com. 642-7552