Political Parties Have Platforms

Political parties have platforms. The people who belong to a political party generally have some agreement with that platform. When you are voting for someone to fill a political office, it is helpful to know what party they belong to in order to understand some of their basic beliefs. Recently, in the part of North Carolina where I live, some of our elected officials have changed political parties because they felt that they could no longer support a political party’s platform. However, there is still one election in our county (Craven County) where voters have no idea what party the candidates belong to–that is our Board of Education election. It would be very helpful for the voters to know what party candidates for the Board of Election belong to.

A friend sent me a list of seven reasons why it would be helpful to know the party affiliation of candidates running for the Board of Education.

  1.  All other races on the ballot require party affiliation to be specified, including most recently, judges.
  2.  All voters should have access to as much information about a candidate as is reasonably possible.
  3.  Knowledge of a candidate’s political party affiliation is an excellent way for voters to have sufficient information to make an informed decision between candidates.
  4. The two main political parties are increasingly different in values, beliefs, and guiding principles that have a direct impact on the decisions made by the Board of Education members.
  5.  In the most recent election, there were approximately 10,000 voters who voted for candidates in other races on the ballot who failed to vote for any candidate for the Board of Education.
  6.  Interviews with voters at the polls strongly indicated that many did not have enough information about the candidates for the Board of Education to make an informed decision.
  7.  The notion that Board of Education members should be above politics in making decisions about the education of our children has increasingly been shown to be wishful thinking and not consistent with reality,

If you are in agreement with the above statements and live in Craven County, please let your County Commissioner know how you feel. The only way to get political parties put in the ballot in the Board of Education elections is to have the County Commissioners ask the State Legislators to move on the issue. The State Legislators will not move on the issue unless the County Commissioners initiate it.