I live in the supposedly progressive Commonwealth of Massachusetts. We are a deep blue state with but two levels of government: the town and the Commonwealth itself. Counties are largely irrelevant; they generally consist only of courts and a sheriff. In my town we have a representative town meeting, a board of selectmen, and a school committee. On the state level, we get to vote for a "Representative in General Court" and a "Senator in General Court", plus some statewide officials such as the governor, state treasurer, and state auditor.
The problem is that unless there's a Proposition 2 1/2 override on the ballot, most of my fellow townspeople don't vote in local elections. Of those who do, I'll bet the majority know nothing about any of the people whose names appear on the ballot. These local races aren't covered by the Boston media, and unless you go out of your way to learn about them, you'll be completely uninformed when you show up on election day to vote. Most people, of course, won't go out of their way.
There are always some offices for which only one name appears on the ballot, and one or two for which no name appears at all, but only a blank line.
What sort of democracy is this?
While it is dangerous to extrapolate from one's personal experience, it dawned on me the other day that the vast majority of my town's residents play no part in determining how it is governed, or by whom. And if that's true here, it's probably true in large swaths of the country. The local powers that be have no real checks on their powers, so long as they do nothing egregious enough to attract media attention.
In the long run, it strikes me that this development is dangerous. These are the people who control the police, the schools, and who decide what gets built and where. They wield considerable influence behind the scenes over who gets chosen to run for higher offices. The infamous Scott Brown began his political career as property assessor in Wrentham and a member of that town's board of selectmen.
Sometimes I wonder if we might be better off if the only influence we had on who became our Governor or President was through our choice of selectman or school committee member. Those, after all, are the elections in which our individual votes are most likely to count.
And they are the elections to which we are least likely to pay attention, thanks in large part to our consolidated corporate news media.