Someone sent me an e-mail that referred to an argument often used against the current five-member County Commission, where each member is elected only by the voters of their district, and in favor of the planned expansion that will add to new members to the BCC, each of whom will be elected by voters from the entire county.

The e-mail cited arguments that make claims I've been referring to as the Single-Member Representation Myth.

Supporters of at-large elections say County Commissioners who are elected only by their district voters won't be concerned with issues facing Clay County residents who can't vote for them. That because they are elected only by the residents of their individual district, they have morphed into being only District Commissioners, not County Commissioners. That their duties and fields of concern have been cut to one-fifth of what they were when they were elected at-large.

For example, the mythical premise is that a County Commissioner from Fleming Island could not be voted for by a resident of Clay Hill and therefore will have no interest in the concerns or issues of Clay Hill or any of its residents, deferring instead only to the concern and judgment of the Commissioner from Clay Hill. The Single-Member Representation Myth is that County Commissioners will put on blinders at the boundaries of their own districts.

Of course, that isn't true, not unless the elected official's biggest concern isn't doing his or her job, but getting re-elected. The single-member district Charter Amendment only changed the way Commissioners were elected, not their job description. The duties of County Commissioners remained unchanged, exactly what they were before being elected in single-member districts.

The at-large proponents using that myth will point out that you already see examples of current County Commissioners deferring in some ways to the commissioners from the districts where an issue many arise. Of course the Commissioners do that. It's common practice in any legislative body. That same district deference was a part of BCC practice back when they were elected at-large and will continue to be a common BCC practice whether its members are elected by single-member districts, at-large, or some hybrid of the two.

There may well be differences in the way elected officials approach their jobs as representatives of the people, but those differences result from who gets elected, not how they get elected.

Michael S. Mann

michaelsmann@comcast.net [1]