Want to not elect people in jail? Pay attention to local media

The entire world was focused on the presidential election this November.

But the reality is, the down-ballot elections are just as important, yet voters have almost zero knowledge of not just the candidates’ stances, but even who they are.

Never was that more evident than in Hancock County, Indiana , where the populace elected a guy who is on house arrest while awaiting trial for a felony sexual assault charge in Nevada.

How does this happen? Very simply put, voter ignorance.

There are 65,292 registered voters in Hancock County, which is most of the voting-age population. Of those, more than two-thirds cast ballots in the election. And enough of them cast votes to elect John Jessup to a county council seat, despite the whole house arrest thing.

We pay attention to the top of the ticket. We maybe pay attention to who’s running for governor. Beyond that, most voters just decide “who’s on the same team as my preferred candidate” and vote for that party all the way down the ballot. It’s that kind of tribalism George Washington warned us about, and my friend Andrew Horning has been railing against for years.

They have no idea who the down-ballot candidates are. They just know “Trump’s a Republican, so I’m going to vote for all the Republicans,” or “Harris is a Democrat, so I’m going to vote for all the Democrats.”

And in Hancock County, where Trump carried 65% of the vote and Republicans have won every single countywide office — except one — in a quarter-century, that’s almost invariably the former.

Character doesn’t matter. Appeal to voters doesn’t matter. The candidates’ actual stances on policy don’t matter — and the Republican candidates actively avoided allowing voters to hear them, as they refused en masse to show up at any debates or candidate forums. And voters still rewarded them by electing them.

The only thing that matters is tribal affiliation.

But this was avoidable. The county GOP that has an iron grip on local governance didn’t go out of its way to denounce Jessup — after all, if he’s elected and resigns, they get to caucus and pick his replacement among the party insiders and cronies. While they didn’t include them in their advertising, by avoiding doing any neutral forums or appearances, the other candidates avoided facing questions about and bringing light to Jessup’s foibles.

But that still probably wouldn’t matter, because of one reason.

Voters don’t pay attention to local politics, even though local decisions affect their lives far more than anything that happens in Washington. It’s not Donald Trump that’s voting to give a tax abatement to the gigantic warehouse down the street, or to rezone a property to build a steel mill downwind of your property. It’s the local government.

And while people in Hancock County loudly and resoundingly complain about those tax abatements for speculative warehouses, they continue to vote in the same people who keep approving them, because of tribal affiliation. For example, the one candidate who made ending tax abatements a central part of his platform, Luke Lomax, finished seventh in a seven-person race. But Lomax is also a Libertarian, who isn’t going to draw the votes from ill-informed red and blue voters.

Voters had every opportunity to know about Jessup’s foibles. The local newspaper covered his arrest, extradition to Nevada and trial, house arrest and another harrassment and sexual discrimination claim from a female law enforcement officer. Not only that, but there were also questions about his relationship with a construction company seeking business from the county from two years before.

Long story short, anyone who has been paying attention should not have voted for this person under any circumstance.

But they weren’t paying attention, because being informed has a cost. There is a cost in taking enough time to pay attention and often a cost in subscribing to the local newspaper (however, this was also covered by local TV stations and their websites, which are free), and many people are simply not willing to incur either of those costs.

Public choice economists refer to this phenomenon “rational voter ignorance,” in that voters are simply not going to take the time or expense to be informed, so they either make uninformed decisions or no decision, and often thus end up voting for policies or politicians that are actually harmful to them. In a presidential election year, that often favors down-ballot candidates from the voters’ favored party, as more of the less-informed voters vote.

The local newspaper in Hancock County, the Daily Reporter, has a circulation less than 6,000 — less than 20% of the county’s households. Twenty-five years ago, the newspaper was circulating into nearly 50% of the county’s households. That means more 80% of the voters are likely not willing to be engaged enough to be informed.

Yes, there’s a significant backlash against “liberal media” among conservatives — and some of that is very warranted — but that doesn’t really translate to small, local, community newspapers and radio stations. They are staffed by people who live in your community, who are spending their time covering local commissions, councils and school boards, largely to keep you informed. And yes, they’ll write about how a local elected official runs afoul of the law — which, unfortunately, happens all too frequently in Hancock County.

Those stories aren’t “liberal” or “conservative” in nature. They’re the facts.

The local elected officials bank on you, the voter, being ignorant. It’s how the majorty party can turn the county into its own fiefdom with almost no checks to its power. It’s how they can propose a property tax increase to pay for a jail, have it resoundingly rejected by the voters in a referendum, and then just gavel in an illegal meeting and pass an income tax increase to pay for it anyway. It’s why they hold meetings during the workday, when most voters can’t attend and know what’s going on.

It happens not because of straight-ticket voting or any of the other reasons put forth. It happens because voters find the cost of paying attention to be greater than the benefit.

The First Amendment guarantees a free press because of the media’s importance in holding elected officials accountable. However, their reach only exists as far as the number of people who read and pay attention.

Subscribe to your local newspaper so you can understand what’s happening in your community. Therefore, you can save your community from being an embarrassment and from bad governance.