The Villages Daily Sun

Open records help ensure
an open political process

Perhaps unfettered access to public records has never been as important as it is during this presidential election year.

All three of the presumptive or likely candidates of both major parties have held public office for tenures of varying length, giving the electorate access to information about decisions they have made and opinions they have expressed on the record while they have held other offices.

Potential voters should take advantage of their access to every record they can find that pertains to the official actions and comments of the current candidates for the presidency.

Of course, the method most commonly used by people today to access original public records is the Internet, and citizens should be encouraged to make liberal use of the World Wide Web to learn everything they can concerning the candidates’ voting records on issues that have been decided and their opinions on the issues that remain to be decided.

A wealth of information is available online from sources such as the Congressional Record and documents on the Web sites of various individual federal and state agencies.

And if you aren’t computer-savvy or feel like you aren’t finding all of the information online that should be available on any or all of the candidates, you can always go to the local public library, where a friendly librarian is available to help you ferret out the documents that will bring focus to your search and will be most helpful to you in your quest for the truth.

Having access to records of the candidates’ past words and deeds is especially important when at least one of the races is a barn burner, as is the case in the Democratic primary contest between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, in which charges and countercharges are flying hot and heavy.

When candidates in any campaign begin accusing each other of all manner of unsavory actions or statements, it is important, first of all, to ascertain that the accusations represent the unvarnished truth.

In a time-honored tradition, especially when all else fails, politicians will resort to the tactic of twisting his or her opponent’s positions or statements on a particular issue, taking them out of context, or (hang on to your hats) telling outright lies to put themselves in a positive light or to portray their adversary in a negative light.

Even when the candidates in a political contest decide to keep the rhetoric on a genteel level and refrain from slinging mud and barbs at each other, the voters can ill afford to accept every statement made by any of the candidates at face value.

Even candidates who profess to wage what they describe as positive campaigns often can be guilty of trying to make themselves look good, or of making their opponents look bad, via the sin of omission.

Many politicians who may appear to be taking the high road by refusing to criticize their rivals will expound at great length on their accomplishments and tell the voters what they want to hear on the issues that matter to them.

Don’t expect any of these high-minded hopefuls, however, to go out of their way to tell the electorate the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about their former failures or misdeeds, or past instances when they have made statements or taken positions on pertinent issues that are contrary to what the majority of voters want to hear.

In instances such as these, the impetus is placed on the voters, the ones who are charged with separating truth from fiction, to make sure that no statement by a candidate for elected office goes unchallenged.

That is why it is so important to have strong open records/open meetings laws such as those on the books in Florida, and that is why it is so important for voters and their elected representatives to resist efforts to water down those measures.

It is not only the news media that benefit from open records/open meetings laws, but everyone who wants transparent, honest government in the sunshine.

Reproduced courtesy of The Villages Daily Sun.
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