Traditional voter education teaches us that voters have rights. As a part of the electorate, citizens have the right to free and fair elections, to have the secrecy of their ballots protected, and for voters running for office, to have free and equal access to government resources. All of that is true, of course, and very important for our democratic way of life to keep on thriving. But one thing—among many, to be honest—traditional voter education doesn’t emphasize nearly enough is the right of voters to hold their elected representatives accountable, once they’ve been installed in power.
According to most voter education lectures, accountability comes from two main mechanisms: first, the recall election; and second, the opportunity to vote lemons out of office when they run for re-election. To be honest, both these “solutions” are too easy to subvert, too lame and ultimately, available too late to do much good.
For the responsible voter, therefore, accountability means so much more.
“Holding elected officials accountable” should not be limited to the threat of removal from office—as dramatic as that threat may sound. Rather, the definition should be given a more active voice; a more practical component that will help ensure faithful performance instead of just penalizing bad governance.
Voters should be taught, therefore, that holding elected officials accountable starts even before those people become elected officials. This is why I teach pre-voters—the people who have yet to be registered to vote—to start observing politicians long before they file their certificates of candidacy.
What are the positions they take on issues? What policies do they advocate or oppose? How do they speak in their unguarded moments? A responsible voter can learn more about a politician’s fitness for office from these things than from a campaign advertisement. Or from a video of a politician doing the latest dance challenge on social media.
Do not buy into the fiction that running for office means that a person automatically knows more than you do. Just as princes still pass gas, so too do the people hoping to become elected officials still make mistakes, they can still be swayed by the wrong arguments or, worse, they might just be skillfully pretending to know what they are talking about.
So it is very important to ask them questions like why and how; to interrogate their plans beyond just having them enumerate promises. Ask: What if your proposal doesn’t work? What if things don’t go according to plan? What if your assumptions are wrong? And if they refuse to answer, or if they beat around the bush too much, call them out on it as well.
In this way, you can make sure that the people who do end up representing you—even though they aren’t the people you voted for—aren’t just going to be place holders more likely to blindly toe the party-line than to meaningfully represent your interests. In this way, you make sure that elected office is a temporary grant of authority by the true sovereign power—you!—and not an abdication; a trust to be held sacred, and not permission to be subjugated.