Joseph Sabino Mistick: Our best defense is to vote

Since at least 2016 and up until recently, it seemed like there was breaking political news every day, all day long. Maybe you checked your newsfeed first thing every morning or kept your favorite cable news channel on in the background all day long.

It became too much, even for political junkies, and most of us are enjoying a break from all that. Fox, CNN and MSNBC have all seen their prime-time viewership drop since January, as reported by The Hill.

According to media analyst Scott Robson, cable news viewership peaked during the Jan. 6 insurrection and then declined. Robson said it may be that “people are relieved they don’t have to check the news every night to see what the latest crisis is.”

But politics and government keep going even if we stop paying attention, and there is a primary election Tuesday. Where voter registration heavily favors one party, the ultimate winner may be decided now. In a more divided electorate, the opponents for the big contest in November will be picked.

“Government is best which is closest to the people,” President Lyndon Baines Johnson said, and the offices that are on the ballot Tuesday are the closest to the people. We have had important national elections, but we constantly live with our local choices.

Mayors, council members, commissioners, supervisors and school directors serve for little or no pay and put up with a lot. And while there is not much glory in these jobs, they try to improve the lives of a few even a little bit.

Street repair, snow removal, garbage collection, police and fire protection, education, economic development, code enforcement, water and sewage, local taxes — they all depend on these local officials. And some of these local races turn on one vote.

Local magistrates — our community judges — are running. The good ones keep the peace in their communities. They lead with common sense, fairness, patience and their knowledge of the people and their problems.

And Common Pleas Court judges, who run countywide, are on the ballot. We elect our judges, embracing the words of Thomas Jefferson: “I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of society but the people themselves.”

Some lawyers are born advocates, but others are suited for judging, balancing rights and ensuring fair trials. The decisions by these judges touch most of our lives every day. In Allegheny County, there are 39 candidates for nine spots on the bench. Character and values count more than anything.

And candidates are being chosen to run in the fall for Superior Court, Commonwealth Court and the Supreme Court. Those judges will hear appeals from all the Common Pleas Court judges in the commonwealth.

As we go to the polls Tuesday, some politicians are trying to make it harder for us to vote in the future. That’s nothing new. Johnson faced the same threat to democracy in his time and called those politicians out.

“Their actions serve only to assure that their state governments and local governments shall be remote from the people, least representative of the people’s will and least responsive to the people’s wishes,” he said.

Our best defense is to vote.