I didn’t know Supervisor of Elections Phyllis Busansky well. My loss. But I thought our last conversation, however brief, was telling.
Last fall I was at a fundraiser at a neighbor’s – and Busansky, the big woman with the little-people constituency, was musing beyond campaign rhetoric and the unconscionable Buddy Johnson incumbency.
Busansky, the avatar of public service around here, was concerned that even with a reset button for the Supervisor of Elections Office, there was a much-broader, more existential issue that needed addressing. “I’m afraid that not enough people truly value their vote,” she said away from the crowd of well-wishers and political insiders.
She had said that in the context of well-chronicled, chronically low voter turnouts. But she was also pondering the prospect of votes cast based inordinately on negative campaigning. She segued into the necessity of an “informed electorate” for meaningful democracy to prosper. Typical, elected-office, fund-raiser chit-chat this was not.
We agreed that after the election – win or lose – we would find time to explore this further. To delve more into the philosophical than the pragmatic. Were she to win, hers would be an occupation preoccupied with logistics, budgets, paper trails, voter education and post-Buddy clean-up. And hardly insulated from politics.
And yet. What of that office’s role in doing something about a process that has been becoming less participant than spectator sport? An electorate that arguably is too often more reflexive than reflective when it comes to actual ballot casting?
We never did have that follow-up chat. My loss again.