Ogden City Council: Council Sponsoring Candidate Forum, To Be Aired On Channel 17 and Available Online

Late in September we posted an article announcing that two write-in candidates had been certified as "valid" by Cindi Mansell's Ogden City Recorder's Office within the 2011 Ogden City Municipal Mayoral and Council At-Large "C" races, respectively. During the course of a fairly robust reader discussion, one gentle reader broached this thorny issue: "It'll be very interesting to see if either or both of the write-in candidates is invited to participate in the upcoming city-sponsored debates. Just one more ethical pitfall that would be avoided if the city would quit sponsoring debates."

In that connection, we've just now received a City Council news update from Council Communications Specialist Amy Mabey, and the Council's position on allowing late-arriving write-in candidate Safsten to participate in the 10/12/11 debate now becomes crystal clear. We'll cut to the chase with the relevant text:

The purpose of this forum is to provide citizens an opportunity to become familiar with those who have been certified through the primary election as City Council candidates. In order to encourage full participation in the entire election process, Council leadership determined that write-in candidates will not be invited to participate in candidate forums sponsored by the City Council.

Council Vice Chair Neil Garner said, “The Council wants to honor all of the time, energy andexpense of those who went through the primary process. Full participation in both the primaryand general election processes shows that candidates are fully committed to running for office.”

We'll go on record right now to say Weber County Forum is in complete agreement with the City Council's highly rational approach to this problem. Looking back a few years to the time (not that long ago) when write-in votes were cast on election day via paper ballots, we'll make the observation that, historically speaking, the American-style write-in ballot process never contemplated allowing johnny-come lately candidates to participate in the full campaign process against other candidates who played by the rules. It would be a critical mistake to allow these sloppy write-in candidates to participate in any way in the formal campaign process until election day, wethinks.

So in closing we'll just say that we'll doff our WCF hat to the Ogden City Council, for their extremely wise decision in this matter.

That doesn't mean, of course, that the invitation for "off the cuff reader commentary" isn't at all closed to that ideologically wide array of WCF Readers of all political stripes who may (imagine this) wish to express their contrarian opinions.

Have at it, O Gentle Ones.