Why you might want to consider voting the ballot from the bottom up

Yes, I know: All eyes are supposed to be on Pennsylvania now, and Michigan, and Nevada and North Carolina, too. Maybe even Iowa and Arizona. I don't know who could actually keep their eyes on all those widely-scattered places, all at the same time. Marty Feldman perhaps?

But, as a practical matter, the person ultimately elected as POTUS will have far less actual influence in most of our lives than the persons we are about to elect (or retain) as judges, or the persons we will elect to the General Assembly or as members of the Chicago School Board.

Look at it this way: You will probably never get invited to a State Dinner at the White House, but you may get a speeding ticket. One of your wayward relations may get pinched for vandalism. Someone may fall on your sidewalk and sue you; you will certainly pay property taxes. That was why the late Avy Meyers used to say it was so important to pay attention to the races at the bottom of the ballot, to the point of voting the ballot from the bottom up. I suggest this idea is equally valid today as it was in Avy's lifetime.

I've recently read and re-Tweeted a couple of long threads on X about "subsidiarity," a nice 25-cent word that the Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines as "a principle in social organization holding that functions which are performed effectively by subordinate or local organizations belong more properly to them than to a dominant central organization." In other words, it is a principle which suggests that decision making is best done on the most local level possible. Apparently (and maybe all of you knew this already, but I didn't) "subsidiarity" has a long, important history in Catholic social teaching, too.

There weren't many Catholics in America at the time of the Revolution, but the patriots' rallying cry of "No Taxation Without Representation" sounds to me like an application of this principle of subsidiarity: Each of the Colonies had their own legislatures to raise revenues for local needs; but the Colonies objected vociferously, and, ultimately, violently, to decisions about their defense and boundaries and obligations being made in London where the Colonists had only lobbyists to advance their interests. (Ben Franklin worked in London for many years as an agent of several Colonies, for example.)

And, if decisions are best taken at the most local level possible, voters should naturally be more concerned with their local leaders that with those who would strut and fret upon the national stage. That sounds suspiciously like what Avy Meyers used to say and, of course, Avy wasn't Catholic either.

If we were more focused on selecting the best possible candidates on the local level, maybe we'd have better candidates to choose from at higher rungs on the cursus honorum as well.

I can dream, can't I?