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Mike Anderson’s name should be on the November ballot as a candidate for the State School Board from District 12. That’s northern Utah County. He is, after all, the incumbent who won his last race in 2000 with 68 percent of the vote. He liked the job and wanted to do it for another four years.
Credit an ill-conceived new law passed during the last legislative session for keeping Anderson off the ballot. It requires a 12 member Nominating and Recruiting Committee to screen potential school board candidates. The committee then forwards three names per district to the Governor, who then chooses the two candidates in each district who will be on the ballot.
For a variety of reasons – some political, some logistical – Anderson didn’t make the cut. As we said, he should have! The voters of northern Utah County should have had the right to decide his fate – not a dozen members of a committee appointed by the governor.
KSL believes the new candidate selection law is seriously flawed. Foremost, it is blatantly contrary to the most basic principles of democracy. It is a law that must be revisited during next year’s legislative session with an eye to returning responsibility for choosing candidates for the State Board of Education where it belongs – with the people they are elected to represent.
