All politics is local

[rhu]

This afternoon, one of our ward aldermen made his annual walk down our street to leave his "dear constituents" letter in our door. Although I'm planning to vote for him on Tuesday (not that he's running opposed or anything), I am troubled by the fact that this is basically all the contact he has with us.

I consider myself a committed and well-informed citizen. I read the Newton Tab cover-to-cover every week; I'm a moderately active commenter on their blog and on the Newton Streets and Sidewalks blog. I've contacted my ward aldermen about the traffic situation on Mill St. And I am one of the small percentage of Newton residents who votes in the off-year aldermanic and school-committee elections. I have read the campaign literature from and coverage of the various candidates in the contested races and have made (what I hope are) rational choices based on their positions on the issues facing Newton: the High School construction debacle and the looming Prop 2 1/2 override, traffic calming (including the bicycle lane issue on Walnut St.), rezoning and the Chestnut Hill development monster, the size of the Board of Aldermen, whether to extend the beach at Crystal Lake, which crumbling school building gets fixed first, and last but certainly not least the unbelievably fractious relationship between the mayor and the firefighters.

So why do I feel so disconnected? Despite the great efforts by the Tab and NewTV, why do I feel like my fellow citizens are tuned out? In this election, more than a national or even statewide election, our proportional voice is the strongest. For U.S. president, my vote doesn't count --- Massachusetts will send its electoral vote to the Democratic candidate, no matter what. But my choice between Geoff Epstein and Gail Glick in the only contested school committee race, or in the tough choice in Ward 3 at-large, could spell the difference in who gets elected --- and in who will vote on next year's budget, and what my property taxes will be, and whether the city services that I get will be sufficient, and whether the firefighters will have safe and adequate equipment.

So why aren't my neighbors and I debating the candidates' merits when we chat while watching the kids? Why aren't the candidates organizing local meet-and-greet parlor events? Why don't they do that during the year? Why is it that the only time I see Steve Linsky is the first Sunday in November as he's leaving my front porch after dropping off his letter?

Why aren't we passionate about this election? Why aren't we passionate about local government week in and week out?

What's wrong with us?

Comments

[lucretia-borgia.livejournal.com]

Gee, I've actually had a number of conversations with idiots fellow citizens about the candidates for the local and at-large City Council seats. The primary for the local seat, in particular, did bring up some passion.

But I read a review recently of The Myth of the Rational Voter in The New Yorker. It didn't get a very good review, but one thing that the review pointed out was that from an economic perspective, in the vast majority of our elections our votes are swamped out by everyone else's votes, so that the cost to any individual of not voting (or not voting in an informed, rational manner) is small. Not just in MA, but even in, say, my local election: I may know for certain that X is the best candidate, but if all 200 other voters vote Y, my vote is irrelevant. So why should I invest the time in researching candidates rather than, say, making money or playing with my kids? Even arguing, "well, if everyone thought that way..." is pointless, because the fact is that everyone does think that way, so no matter what, I lose if I invest a lot of time in researching my vote. (Where the time investment might pay off is if I can influence lots of other people to vote the way I want them to.)

In Brighton, so few people vote that my vote actually does count for something, or at least it feels like it does, and there's actually a fairly big difference among the candidates. Those two factors make it worth discussing, if not getting passionate about, whom you want to elect, particularly if the discussion might lead the other person at least to stop supporting an odious candidate. And remember that in Boston, if I have a local issue (my streetlight hasn't been fixed) unresolved through the regular bureaucracy, then I contact the specific person I voted for (or didn't vote for) for assistance (as well as going through the Mayor-for-Life's Help Line.).

[vettecat.livejournal.com]

Honestly? People are busy. Everyone's just trying to keep up with the normal hamster wheel of work/chores/family, and the proliferation of electronics seems to have led to less free time, not more. Even e.g. getting together with friends for dinner is a challenge, and I'm sure it's the same for other people. Even more so for people with kids. The unfortunate truth is that if someone manages to find a spare half-hour between laundry and whatever comes next, they're probably going to want to spend it relaxing rather than researching the current zoning laws.

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

Why aren't we passionate about local government week in and week out?

I ask that question all the time...

[rubrick.livejournal.com]

I don't know about others, but I simply don't feel very local. I've lived in the city of Sunnyvale for about 8 years now, but I certainly don't identify as a "Sunnyvalian". It's just a pleasant-enough place where I happen to have found a decent apartment.

I suspect I might feel differently if I had kids.

[sethg]

As a poli-sci writer said a while ago, local government is extremely weak. A city can't control the movement of people or capital across its borders; at best, it can get into bidding wars with other cities. It can't print money. In Massachusetts, it even has limited control of its ability to tax. So I'm not surprised that the average voter pays even less attention to local politics than to state/national politics.

Why aren't people passionate about lots of things?

[jikamens.livejournal.com]

I think the reason why people aren't passionate about local politics is, at least to some extent, the same as the reason why they aren't passionate about the things that I get all worked up about and post on my blog. Other comments here have already touched on this, to some extent.

If you get ripped off or treated poorly by a business, then you might feel that's just how things are nowadays, and there's no point in trying to do anything about it. You might feel that even if you try, you're unlikely to have any significant effect on preventing the same thing from happen to other people in the future, so it's just not worth the effort. And you might feel that you just don't have the time to deal with it -- you write it off as a "cost of living" and move on, because you have more important things to do.

You already know why I don't react that way when I have a bad consumer experience. I believe that fighting back *can* make a difference, and that even if something I do helps one other person avoid a similar problem in the future, it's worth it. Andrea says that I have an "over-developed sense of justice" -- I just can't stand seeing a company get away with bad behavior without trying to do something about it.

Local politics is much the same way. As lucretia_borgia pointed out, people believe that their votes are meaningless and therefore it's not worth the effort to become an informed voter. As vettecat pointed out, people think they have more important things to do. And as sethg_prime pointed out, people think that even if their vote were to make a difference, the impact that the election results would have on their day-to-day lives is minimal, since local government is so weak.

All of these reasons are pragmatic, and most people live their lives pragmatically. In contrast, a commitment to be politically informed and active, or to be an active consumer advocate, is moral rather than pragmatic -- it's something you need to do because it's the right thing to do, not necessarily because you personally are going to see enough of a short-term pay-back to make it worthwhile.

Most people simply never manage to elevate their lives from the pragmatic realm into the moral one, or to recognize that they have a moral obligation to spend their own time on things which benefit the greater good, if not them personally.