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Sigh. We’ve got to do it all over again.
I know, I know, I chastised you for your lack of civic participation last time around, and told you to go vote. And you did! Hooray, Barack Obama won DC’s 3 electoral votes! He couldn’t do that without you! Oh, and some local elections happened too.
But one of those was the election of Phil Mendelson as Council Chair, freeing up his old at-large seat. For what I believe is the 384th year in a row DC has to hold a special election, held this year on April 23rd. The DC Board of Elections has all the info you need on their website. Keep in mind you can vote early at One Judiciary Square, Monday-Saturday from 8:30 am to 7:30 pm (except for the 14th and 16th).
Sure, I could blame you (and me) for making Kwame Brown the Chair in the first place and setting the dominos in motion way back when, but as he was running against Vincent Orange I can’t be too harsh. It was a crappy choice, and we did what we had to do.
Let’s fix that this time around. We’ve got better options, let’s put one of them on the Council. And no, I won’t tell you which one. But here’s a few options to help you narrow it down:
- Let’s Choose DC : This is a collaboration between local blogs DCist, Greater Greater Washington, and Prince of Petworth. It consists of a series of questions posed to each of the candidates, and then readers voted on each answer on a scale from “Very Persuasive” to “Very Unpersuasive”. It has quite a bit of data, and quite well laid out. If nothing else, noting which candidates didn’t even feel like answering the question is a pretty good data point.
- Candidate Forum : Tonight, the Eliot-Hine Middle School Civics Club, Stuart Hobson Middle School, Jefferson Academy, Defeat Poverty DC and the Capitol Hill Public School Parents Organization are hosting a candidate forum at Eliot-Hine Middle School (1830 Constitution Ave, NE) at 6:30 pm. It will be moderated by Mark Segraves from NBC4 and Thomas Byrd from We Act Radio, as well as a student representative from the Eliot-Hine student government. The forum will focus on education and youth issues, which no one around here cares about, do they?
This is a special election, so it’s going to be decided by a ridiculously small percentage of eligible voters. How about we go out and pick a councilmember we can be proud of? Or, failing that, one that can finish a term without being indicted? Because I’m really tired of special elections and we’re only going to stop them by demanding more of our candidates. That means showing up.