PLATTEVILLE, April 1 — As you can tell from page 1 of this edition (no April fooling) of your favorite weekly newspaper, we have another election Tuesday.

(So apparently, in contrast to what the more strident of the No Kings protestors Saturday — who fortunately did not run me over while I was shooting their photos as I was standing in the middle of South Court Street — or some of our Letters-writers would have you believe, we do in fact have a relatively functioning constitutional democratic republic complete with the right to protest what your government is doing. The term “democracy” does not apply to only your preferred election results; to believe in democracy requires you to accept that you may be represented by people you didn’t vote for doing things you don’t support.) 

Unlike recent elections, and unlike the next election in August and November (not to mention what we’re doomed to experience two years later), this election cycle has been relatively quiet. The Supreme Court race will not flip the court’s liberal ideological majority. No school districts in our area are holding referendums. (That means I don’t have to question why some people object to school districts’ holding funding referendums, because few things seem as democratic as voters voting on their own taxation levels.) The Grant and Iowa county boards have exactly one contested race each, and the latter has two districts without candidates. Lafayette County has as many board races as its western and northern neighbors combined.

Part of the reason is that, unlike the November elections, you are probably voting for people you actually know, and in contexts outside of whatever office they’re in or running for. Running for a city council, village board, school board or county board is more like what the Founding Fathers had in mind for leadership of this country, and certainly not the multi-year multi-billion-dollar circus we now get every four years. (Or the multi-million-dollar circus we get for governor or Congressional elections. And now that I think of it “circus” is the wrong word, because circuses are supposed to be entertaining, not appalling to the point of disgust.)

Because this election includes only one statewide race, the campaigns have been mostly (but not completely) free of the patronizing, insulting theme that we are weaklings who must be protected from bad things by more government from the correct side winning elections. The corollary is that if you don’t support more money for (insert issue here, particularly money for public schools) you don’t support (insert issue here, particularly public schools). The fact is that everyone who doesn’t live in the street or a college dormitory, has any income at all and buys anything does support (insert issue here, particularly public schools) because they pay taxes. A lot of people don’t realize that; then again some people seem to believe that anything less than universal praise for a government service equals condemnation of everyone involved in providing said service. (That’s why I vote for candidates who dare to not sing from the hymnal written by those in charge of a governmental body.)

The only real mystery besides who will represent the candidate-free county board districts might be who gets elected to the Platteville Board of Education who is not on Tuesday’s ballot, since board member Josh Grabandt resigned upon being named police chief. I can guess (though I will not say here) who will win the aforementioned Supreme Court race, though I have yet to see as large an “undecided” percentage as the Marquette University Law School poll reported last week in that race.

One answer voters should not accept from candidates for office is “we need more money” from the state or the federal government. Maybe schools and local units of government do need more money from the state or the feds, but no local municipal official or school board member is going to change what the state or the feds let trickle down to here. The financial question is always how to best use the money you have. You can’t spend money you don’t have, it’s disingenuous to want to get money from somewhere else other than the local taxpayer, and it’s dishonest to not tell people they’re not taxed enough if you insist on more government money for your favorite issue. (Keep that in mind the next time you hear the words “billionaire tax.”)

Democracy is messy even when it’s not a mess. Thanks to institutions in which humans are involved, this country is, as a Wall Street Journal columnist put it Friday, “what it has long been: a contentious, often frustrating democracy shaped by competing interests and imperfect leadership.” In far too many countries around the world, the ordinary citizen doesn’t get a meaningful vote, not to mention anything Americans would consider to be inalienable rights endowed by our Creator.