Protect your right to vote on Election Day

Several candidates who will appear on primary election ballots in Wyoming have endorsed replacing elected officials with appointed bureaucrats. Some of these candidates are even running for election to offices that they do not believe should be held by citizens who have been elected through the democratic process. Other candidates have said that they believe other offices that conflict with the office they are seeking should be appointed, not elected. Examples of these offices that some candidates want to remove from the democratic process range from the statewide Superintendent of Public Instruction to local County Coroners. In Cheyenne, the debate over whether there are too many people living in Cheyenne to entrust the government to the hands of an elected politician rather than appointing a professionally trained bureaucrat to rule the city.

There is great irony to the fact that those candidates are running for office on a platform of ending democracy in certain circumstances. On Election Day, whether it is an off-year party primary election or the more visible quadrennial general election of our country's President, citizens should be celebrating the fact that our forefathers replaced appointed colonial governors with executives elected from among the residents of the community governed. Even the opening phrase in Wyoming's constitution rightly proclaims that all power is inherent in the people, and all free governments are founded on their authority.

World history has proven over time that the British system of government that Americans overthrew and improved upon in the 18th Century was already the best available outside of North America. The improvement that America's founding father's made was to subject even the administrative executives to a vote of the people. This improvement unquestionably made it impossible for some specifically-trained bureaucrats to run governmental affairs in the new United States of America. However, this momentous change is rooted in America's founding principle that government not only derives its just powers from the consent of the governed but that the ballot box is the surest guarantor that government action remains directly answerable to the will of the people.

Whoever has the final authority to direct action or inaction by government, whether local, state, or nation, that person must be directly answerable to voters at the ballot box. Those voters, in turn, must arm themselves with accurate information then act reasonably and judiciously at that ballot box to hold leaders and other candidates accountable.