UNEDUCATED VOTERS

If a population is uneducated there are two adverse outcomes...
Either the leaders just sit and do nothing (or steal) or
the leaders even if they want to do something cannot because they do not have a vote of public support. In either case an educated population is essential.

This is how it works. I saw it first hand last night.
We have local government here. It is a gated community and we have elected members of a board of directors...they are volunteers, no payment....who are to see to the maintenance of the community... ..roads, security systems, tree trimming, storm drains, etc. The city or county is not responsible, Our home owners association is responsible.

The roads have not been resurfaced in 30 years and are crumbling. The board of directors has been meeting for months to fine tune the details of what will be involved in new roads. Exactly what is to be done and how much it will cost. I have attended several of the meetings. It will cost $350,000. They have figured out how to take from one fund and put into another, shifting things around and coming up with a need for $120,000. This would come from an assessment of property values and 120 home owners to supply the funds over 8 months. They have put a lot of time and effort in this and done a great job of coming up with this proposal and I am in favor of it. The roads need to be redone.

But no one ever comes to the board meetings. Maybe five people... and three of them come just to argue about everything and don't seem to even understand the topic under discussion and start off arguing about something else altogether. The community is uneducated about the issues.

In order to go ahead there needs to be majority vote. The meeting to vote was last night. Last week a newsletter went out to everyone. But I could see from the newsletter that it did not going into enough depth of why the proposal was up for vote. the research that went into it. All the people saw was $350,000 and we owe out $120,000 of it. It was defeated by a huge majority.

Before the vote I asked the people around me, "What do you think?" Their answers were really off the wall. They had no idea all the serious preparations that had gone into the proposal and how it really was the best possible course of action. Someone simply brought up old grievances against one of the board members, and some else simply said, "That's too much money." They had no clear idea of the research that went into it. It was voted down. 67 to 31. And everyone was angry at the board for even bringing it up. One woman used foul language at the top her voice and suggested voting them all out. And this is an affluent community!

That is the challenge for a democratic type government. The people must be educated and have some integrity. But even for a monarchy we have accounts of how the king is very sensitive to what the citizens think of him and his rule. Even Lord Ramachandra (I think it is was Lord Rama) would sometimes go out among the people in disguise to hear what they were saying.

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