No opposition? Not a problem. Wait, I meant TOTAL problem - by Matty Jacobson

Matty Jacobson is the owner,
operator, contributor, editor, grand
commander and glorified blogger
of The Skewed Review. But he's
also the Opinion editor for
Dixie Sun. Check out his stuff over
there, too! While you're at it, write
to dixiesun@dixie.edu and tell
them you want Matty as next year's
Editor-in-Chief!

Here’s a little riddle for you: When is an election not an election?

I’m amazed I can’t find a pun-saturated solution to that question. The answer is purely fact. An election is not an election when a person runs unopposed.

Here’s my review for this particularly sticky topic: A person who runs unopposed on accident is rated one out of one successful terms. Let any terms thereafter come once that person has proved him- or herself worthy. People who run unopposed just because they know nobody else is running (and would therefore get the position whether or not they were qualified) gets a rating of, well, one successful term.

This isn’t something that needs to be at the expense of voters, you know.

But you’d better believe after that term they would get a rating of five out of five years of having socks that bunch up in their shoes and a daily visit from a random religion looking to recruit new members.

Obviously elections are held so the governed can decide whom they want as their leader. So I suppose if only one person wants to lead, then the public should be OK with that. But why would that person feel the need to convince the governed that he or she has what it takes if there’s no challenging opponent?

Now I’m not saying a person who runs unopposed will be a bad leader. Brody Mikesell, after all, is a great guy. It just so happens he's the only guy.

He could be like George Washington. It’s true that was a rather unique situation in that everyone wanted him to lead anyway, and the real political race at that first election was for the vice presidency, but you get my point.

Conversely, an elected official who ran opposed but won anyway can still be detrimental to a society. I mean look at what Paul von Hindenburg did to Germany, and he had four opponents.

Hindenburg appointed a one Adolf Hitler as chancellor of Germany, by the way.

Luckily for Dixie State College, our elected officials don’t hold our very lives in our hands. However, we are in an election year where an unopposed candidate will fill the office of student body president. And yes, we should act as though our lives are on the line.

Are students even aware (or do they care at all) that the presidency will be handed to someone? Is there someone out there who really wanted to run for the position but couldn’t for some reason? Would students elect me if I had run?

Well, we all know the answer to that last one is “of course,” but that’s beside the point.

For whatever reason, students either felt they didn’t want the job, or they didn’t know the job was available. I hope it’s the latter reason.

But if the former is indeed the reason, then we can’t complain if our future student body government isn’t what we wanted or expected.