Last night, I attended Linn-Mar's School Board meeting. During the public comment period, I advised the Board that only 5,500 out of 143,000 eligible voters voted in the school election. In Linn-Mar, just over 600 out of 22,516 eligible voters voted at three polling places. I told them I thought we could do better and one of the ways to do better is to publish a resume on each candidate in The Pride, i.e., the newsletter published by the school district.
Unlike the Gazette which goes to half the households in Linn County and the Marion Times, which goes to about 2200 households in the Marion area, The Pride is mailed to every household in the Linn-Mar school district and it's available at
http://www.linnmar.k12.ia.us/District_Information/announce.asp Why publish a resume on each candidate? As I toured polling places on election day, I asked the poll workers why voter turnout was low. Universally, they said low voter turnout is due to a lack of information about the candidates. Voters want to be informed. I want them to be informed. You should want them to be informed.
Over the coming months, I plan to attend at least one school board meeting in the other 10 school districts in Linn County. I plan to ask each school board to consider publishing the resumes of the 2008 school board candidates prior to the election. --Joel @ 5:25pm