COMMENTARY: Misleading Voters

September 23, 2023

Can freedom long survive in Spotsylvania County?

This is something that voters – knowingly or not – are flowing to the polls to decide. That challenge was squarely before those who attended early voting on Friday.

For some time, before police were called, Nick Ignacio (candidate for Clerk of Court) and Steve Maxwell (candidate for Sheriff) were seen passing out sample ballots that were not approved by either the Democratic or Republican parties.

Who produced them is less important than that Ignacio and Maxwell openly pushed this material on unsuspecting voters coming to exercise the most precious responsibility we have as citizens. To elect those who will represent us.

Speaking of the fake Democratic sample ballot, Spotsylvania County Democratic Committee Chair Bob Martin told the FXBG Advance:

The so-called (D) sample ballot contains voting marks … for 11 candidates NOT endorsed by the Spotsylvania County Democratic Committee. The Maxwell campaign claims the sample ballot was approved, but it was not approved by me as the chair of the Spotsy Dems nor by my counterpart in the Republican Committee.

This is no minor problem.

American voters are poorly informed when it comes to both political news and candidates. The reasons are complex and numerous, but the underlying result is the same – we are less-well-informed than we need to be to make our democracy function properly.

Especially in local elections. With the demise of local news coverage, candidates’ name recognition is falling, and knowledge of candidates’ platforms and past experiences is poor.

This makes voters – especially those who gain the bulk of their news from social media sites – susceptible to people who would knowingly mislead voters for their own gain.

The danger of this became real in Spotsylvania when the Tea Party – the same movement that has given us Ignacio and Maxwell – gained control of the Spotsylvania School Board.

The damage these four people have caused could take a generation to repair. Kirk Twigg, Rabhi Abuismail, Lisa Phelps, and April Gillespie have disenfranchised voters, blocked any new business from advancing to the Board, brought aboard a uniquely unqualified superintendent whose only credentials seem to be his disdain for public education and his long-term personal friendship with Twigg, and much more.

No doubt they learned some of their flagrant attacks on democracy from Ignacio, who is no stranger to such stunts like the one he was involved in Friday.

Devoid of ideas, bellicose in public, and displaying an arrogance that betrays his disdain for the core tenants of democracy (respect for opposing views, the rights of all citizens, and the elevation of the common good over the greater good), even Spotsylvania’s Republican Committee – deeply conservative and overrun with Trump supporters and Tea Party extremists – turned him out of its organization.

Ben Litchfield, who was a challenger for Senate District 27 before losing to Joel Griffin in the June primary, believes it is time for the legislature to get involved to put a stop to such blatant attempts to deceive voters. He told the Advance:

This debacle proves that Mr. Ignacio will go to great lengths, including willfully misleading voters, to win an office for which both the Republican and Democratic Parties of Spotsylvania have judged him unfit. I hope the General Assembly takes up legislation next session to make such deceptions illegal or, short of that, to require enhanced disclosures to preserve the integrity of our elections.

Let’s hope that this becomes reality.

But changing laws won’t solve it.

It’s time citizens in Spotsylvania, and across the commonwealth, come to accept that we have willingly ceded our responsibility to be informed and active citizens to the sewer that is social media, to Artificial Intelligence that is stealing our very humanity, and to snake-oil salesmen who claim to know it all.

Can democracy long survive in Spotsy?

Yes – but only when the citizens themselves accept responsibility for what has happened, and work to regain both their humanity and their democracy.

Images: “DEMOCRACY” by SUXSIEQ is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0. Photos of Sample Ballots courtesy of Bob Martin.

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