March 1, 2012 will not be remembered like December 7, 1941 when Pearl Harbor was burned, or November 22, 1963 when President John F. Kennedy was shot, or November 8, 1989 when capitalism triumphed and the Berlin Wall fell, or September 11, 2001 thousands died at the hands of a few cowards. But 10, 20, 30 years from now the children of Lonoke County will ask their parents, “do you remember when Lonoke County became a Republican County?”. Most people won’t know the exact date, but they’ll remember the time when the country became so sick of bureaucracy, forced social issues, and taxes that people started to wake up, get angry, and most important….they went to the courthouse and filed to run for office. Afterwards they kept their righteous anger and went to the polls.

March 1, 2012 at 12:00pm Central time filing closed for all those wanting to run for office and become committee member across this great state of Arkansas. In Lonoke County it was an hour of accomplishment and the sweet taste of triumph when the roster tallied 60 republicans had filed and 11 Democrats had filed. Over 30 years of hard work has finally come to fruition, and we are excited, very excited.

Another School board election and run off has came and went in Lonoke County. I have to admit that it aggravates me to no end that these elections are held in the off year and the people running don’t have to run as hard as other candidates. This costs our county and state even MORE money to use the machines, hire people, and pay for computer support. It’s just ridiculous in my opinion.

As fiscal conservatives we should all cringe when we hear the dreaded words “special election”. This is due to a few reasons, but the big two are disenfranchisement, and cost.

I say disenfranchisement because these elections are put at these times to limit turnout. It is engineered that way to so that results can be controlled. The same with every millage increase and every other “special election”.

I know that our local Senator Eddie Joe Williams was working on a bill to get school board elections changed, but the teacher’s and administrators lobby was just too strong for him to overcome at this time.

I say cost because each machine that is running on a voting day is a few hundred dollars to have programmed and maintained and watched. Multiply that by 75 counties and you have cost running up into the hundreds of thousands.

Finally there is REAL power and REAL clout in school boards, but people just dismiss the position out of hand for no good reason. If there wasn’t real power and real clout on the school board why would your millage be going up every 2-4 years.