BEING ACCOUNTABLE AND BEING HELD ACCOUNTABLE

Vengeance is Mine, sayeth the Voter!

Accountability has been re-introduced into the charter debate in a Bulletin commentary by former elected officials Nancy Eddy, John Olver and Ellen Story.  They believe “accountability is one of the most important issues driving this vote.” If that’s true it is because it is one of the most misunderstood issues in the campaign, and the three authors misunderstand it in the same way that Amherst For All (AFA) misunderstands it.  But they may have more excuses for misunderstanding it.  When Nancy Eddy was on the Select Board, lack of accountability was a proper charge to make against Town Meeting.  Even when Ellen Story was on the School Committee, Town Meeting votes were opaque.

Many members, including me, agreed with this charge. but instead of adopting the Red Queen’s solution {“Off with its head”) as AFA has done, Town Meeting worked hard to make itself accountable.  Now it is fully accountable.  AFA knows this.  I am sure they have poured over the public accounts of voting and attendance and compared to the Street List to come up with their statistics.  They know that anyone with access to a computer can pull up the voting and attendance records of members from their precinct (and all other precincts).  They know that anyone interested in questioning the candidates for membership from their precinct can come to a meeting (this year on Saturday March 17th at the Middle School).  They know that the easily available League of Women Voters brochure “They Represent You” lists all Town Meeting members with phone numbers and addresses.  They know that all residents can write to members from their precinct with a single push of the button.  Will they thus take accountability off their list of grievances against Town Meeting?  Several debates and forums over the next few weeks will give us the answer.

But there is a larger confusion about accountability, and I think it is pernicious.  AFA appears to believe that voting holds public officials accountable. This is a terrible idea.  “Holding accountable” is a concept in theology and in the administration of justice.  It shouldn’t be applied to politics.  We vote for (and sometimes against) candidates because we agree (or disagree) with them, prefer them to another candidate on some grounds, follow the advice of friends or others and (in the case of incumbents) because we approve (or disapprove) of their record. In none of these scenarios are we holding candidates to account.  We hold wrongdoers to account, not legislators.  Voting otherwise than you would wish is not wrong-doing, although Amherst For All and its predecessor, Sustainable Amherst, seem to think so.  

And that is a great shame.  Both Amherst for All and Sustainable Amherst have interesting and important ideas to contribute to the debate about Amherst’s governance and Amherst’s future.  But they don’t want to contribute to the debate, they want to control it. For over a decade they have identified those who disagree with them so that voters might vote them out. That’s bad.  It’s bad for their ideas, it’s bad for Amherst, and it’s bad for democracy.

Disagreement is the foundation of democracy, but it is also the cause of democracy’s fragility.  “Mene, mene, tekel parsin” is the handwriting on the wall at Balshazzar’s feast in the Book of Daniel:  “You have been weighed in the balance and found wanting.” To apply this to electoral politics turns disagreement into a moral issue.  It stifles dissent and turns political actors into good guys and bad guys.  Perhaps this is what AFA wants.  But it would be awful if the government they support were ever to embody it.