And so one of the things at the very basic level we need to do is just get more people participating. Its hard to run a good democracy with less than one in five people participating. And what that tends to do is bring out the people who are the most focused and organized and generally the most ideological. And its going to take a while to shift that around. The political scientists will tell you thing that is dont make sense to me but theyre pretty consistent on it that moving to more early voting doesnt actually show an increase in turnout. Which again i thought it would. But do you know why we have voting on tuesdays . Because about 200 years ago most people liked to go to church and a lot lived too far from county seat to get there too far on monday. So you go to church on sunday, ride your horse and vote on tuesday. Chris rock said do you know why . Because they dont want us to vote. There is a strong sentiment that hard working folks who dont have an ability to control their own
Can transcend that. That these trends are not permanent. If we listen to another to one another, we can govern even in this polarized environment. We put together a 29 member commission. We had former interior secretary , senator bennett was one of our members. We had a really Knockout Group of people. Former members of congress governors, cabinet officials. Civic leaders, Business Leader people from all walks of american life. We went through an 18 month process and went all over the country california, ohio, philadelphia. We had meetings and engaged the American Public. Then, they had some debate and a liberation. They had and the liberation. Deliberation. They did find common ground. That is our blueprint for strengthening our democracy. It contains 69 recommendations. Three major areas of reform forming congress, forming our elections system, and a call to public service. Not all of these are a magic pill. If we enact them all tomorrow the system is not going to turn around althoug
Democrats held on to their supermajority in the Schenectady County Legislature Tuesday, though a pair of races in District 4 came down to fewer than 100 votes.
Two Democratic incumbents will compete with a pair of Republican challengers for two seats to represent District 3 on the Schenectady County Legislature in Tuesday’s election.