A year after municipal elections in most of the rest of the state, here in Greenwood we have to do it all over again.
The Greenwood City Council will set the election sometime in the next 30 days for us to trudge to the polls and vote.
And we'll vote on the old familiar lever machines.
There's a weakness in HAVA or the Help America Vote Act. Remember all the hoopla last year about voting machines?
Well, we found out last week that HAVA doesn't apply to municipalities.
That's right. If we're voting for mayor or city ward representatives, our municipalities don't have to worry if our votes meet federal standards. Municipalities weren't written into HAVA, according to Secretary of State Eric Clark.
That means voters in this special election will use the old lever machines instead of the new touch-screen machines.
Welcome to the land of "It Doesn't Make Sense."
Passed in 2002, HAVA has been touted as the greatest voter reform law of this generation. The law evolved as an answer to those folks who voted in the 2000 presidential election but didn't have their votes counted because of the so-called "dimpled ballot."
A good bit of money has been spent by the states attempting to comply with federal regulations mandating that everybody needs access to the ballot and every ballot must count.
But that's only on the state, county and federal levels.
I guess when you get to the municipal level, it doesn't matter if your vote counts.
Wrong.
Look what happened here because some votes didn't comply with election laws. Ten votes were called into question by Judge Ann Hannaford Lamar. That was enough for her to tell the Greenwood City Council to set a date for a new election for mayor.
If you look around, a municipal election is mighty important. The person we pick for mayor has a lot to do with our future as individuals and as a community.
Think about it. That person will oversee the day-to-day operations of the city, including police protection, fire protection, road maintenance and construction, debris removal, water and sewer services, lights on the streets and economic development.
Now, that's no small task.
Considering how the basic level of government is so important to our everyday lives, it seems inconsistent with any kind of rational thinking that someone would want to chance an election by using old machines.
If the touch-screen machines are good enough for electing presidents, then my mayor should be selected by a touch-screen machine.
What worries more than the lack of updated equipment is that we didn't use our brains in this situation. We automatically assumed that because we would use the touch-screen machine in other elections, we would use it in municipal elections.
It's a whole method of thinking that bothers me - an authority figure tells us something is good for us but we don't bother to ask questions beyond the obvious.
We all just naturally assumed.
Carry that a step further. Are we going to naturally assume other things about how our local government is run because someone tells us so?
These two candidates, Mayor Harry Smith and challenger Sheriel Perkins, will tell us many things in the weeks to come.
To many, both of these people are authority figures in the community.
Are we going to believe them because they said so? Are we going to think to question?
In a democracy, education is an important tool. I'm not talking about degrees here, but about listening and talking and reading.
There's a saying that nothing in social science is beyond the grasp of a teenager. We have to do a little work and read. We have to ponder what we read and talk about it.
Instead of falling victim to emotional issues or rumor, we should ask more questions.
HAVA's a great example of our being fed like hatchlings in a nest. But we can feed ourselves and grow - one issue at a time; one election at a time.
That's the importance of this special municipal election.
