Soon you’ll hear a knock on the door. Someone will ask you to put a sign in your yard. And if you’re on Facebook, get ready for a flood of digital ads from groups whose names are built from words like “save,” and “protect,” and “stop.”
By the end of September, most of us will have had enough, and we’ll still have five weeks to go.
Here’s what to know before the political chaos hits your front door. If what a group is promoting doesn’t match what it filed, there’s usually a reason.
In one central Ohio community, one we’ll be reporting on in the next few days, a proposed charter amendment filed with the board of elections does not match what the sponsoring group has been telling people on its website. Local business leaders hired an elections attorney this summer to confirm the discrepancy. The certified petition is on file with your county board of elections, and most will gladly email you a copy.
That gap is not an accident. And the neighbor standing on your porch with a clipboard almost certainly doesn’t know about it — they were handed the same summary you’re about to be handed, often by someone who doesn’t live there either, and they’re committed. They believe it.
These campaigns depend on people who never read past the sales pitch. We’d rather tell you this in August than explain it in November.
Then there’s what a measure actually does to the rest of the community. A measure that claims to be about a specific project can be written to include, well, everything. That’s called collateral damage.
For example, a 50-acre trigger — about the size of the county fairgrounds — catches a distribution center or the local hospital. A megawatt cap catches a manufacturing facility that’s been there for 30 years. And a 10% expansion limit means a second shift at a plant that already employs your neighbors.
Whatever the group calls itself, the numbers govern. And they govern more than the project everyone is arguing about.
Another thing to watch is how meetings in your community are run. When a council session turns into a revolt, that’s theater, designed to send people into an emotional tailspin and lead the 11 o’clock news.
But secrecy from the other direction is just as bad. City leaders signing nondisclosure agreements or taking votes the public can’t follow are doing the same damage as the pre-printed signs, just quieter.
Taxpayers have a stake in how their community moves forward. Most of us don’t have time for another obligation. You’re busy with work, and your kids’ string of activities, and there’s a reason nobody shows up for a Tuesday council meeting.
So if you do one thing, do this. Read the filed petition or the actual levy language. Call your county board of elections and ask them to email it. It takes four minutes, and it’s the only version that counts.
If the numbers don’t mean anything to you, and there’s no reason they should, call whoever is running your school levy campaign. That person can tell you in plain dollars what happens to your next levy when the commercial tax base stops growing.
We find it’s gotten harder to distinguish real neighbors from people whose daily devotion is centered on political movements and campaigns. We used to just vote on the rec center and the school levy. That was pretty simple. Those days are behind most of us.
Let’s all do ourselves a favor. Before the sign goes in the front yard, make the call. Nov. 3 is closer than it feels.
This editorial reflects the opinion of The Pennant’s editorial board.
Questions, comments, and letters to the editor are welcome at [email protected].