Rights connote responsibilities.

Utahns surveyed by Dan Jones & Associate pollsters resoundingly defended their right to elect State School Board members recently.At the same time, only six in a hundred could name the person they elected to the board the last time around.

Seems a bit of a mismatch between the right and the responsibility. If electors feel so strongly about retaining their voting prerogative, they should at least make an informed selection and take some interest in what board members are doing once they are elected.

The state board sets general policy for education and oversees the spending of more than half of Utah's tax income. Those factors should create an intense interest in selecting the most high-quality, capable people possible to sit on the board.

As a matter of simple fact, the state board members are most likely to be those whose names appear at the top of the list on the ballot. A few years ago, the Legislature required that the names be placed by lot, since there was a tendency for those whose surnames started with letters closest to the top of the alphabet to be shoo-ins.

To me, that doesn't suggest responsible citizenship on the part of voters.

The right to vote should require at the very least a real effort to know those who are candidates and make a selection based on ability, not on ballot placing.

A couple of factors inherent in the selection of state board members makes their election different from that of other elected officials.

No nominating process is in place for the board election. Virtually every other elective office involves partisan politics. Parties have an incentive to find the best candidates possible to represent their interests.

Each board candidate is self-selected and runs as an independent with no "gateway" screening. In other elective offices, the chances of an independent winning are nil or next to nil.

While partisan sentiments may have no place in the school board's functions, the nominating process has something to be said for it.

A committee studying educational governance in Utah is considering, among other possibilities, initiating a nominating process at the district level for state board members.

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That would preserve the valued right of voters to select their representatives on the board while providing more assurance that high-quality candidates would be on the ballot.

Even that won't create the ideal solution, however, unless the electorate shoulders its responsibility for studying the issues and the candidates beforehand and choosing the people best qualified to provide educational leadership.

This November's election includes school board races in Districts 5, 7 and 9. Incumbents in districts 1 and 3 are unchallenged. (More peculiarities of school board races - comparative lack of interest and difficulty in getting people to run.)

If the top names on the ballots in districts 5, 7 and 9 automatically get huge majority votes, we'll have to assume that voters in those districts are following the historic norm - accepting the right of votership without taking the responsibility to know for what and for whom they are voting.

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