Town Forgets to Have Election Again

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Still no democracy in Wallsburg, Utah. Not because anyone's opposed to it (as far as we know), they apparently just forgot about it.

Wallburg's city recorder, described by the Salt Lake Tribune as "the employee responsible for oversight of elections," not only failed to oversee this year's elections, he or she forgot to have any. The recorder failed to announce the filing period or make any other arrangements for municipal elections on November 5, when everybody else in Utah has them. By the time anyone noticed, it was too late. The mayor and councilmembers will have to be appointed (by who, the report didn't say) and will serve for two years until the next elections roll around in 2015.

Everyone should be familiar with that procedure, at least, because it's what they had to do in 2011 after the last municipal elections. Which Wallsburg also forgot to hold. An acting mayor and councilmembers were appointed at that time, and those were the seats that were supposed to have been filled this time around.

Hmm. The report doesn't say whether the same people are likely to be "appointed" again. This is starting to sound a little fishy.

Not as fishy as when Zimbabwe "misplaced" its list of registered voters in August, or when Texas informed thousands of "presumably dead" voters that they would be removed from the rolls (to which many of the presumably dead objected), but still a little fishy.