Editorial Editorial (June 25, 2004)

Candidates deserve break on fee

The Mountain View City Clerk recently announced that candidates running for Mountain View City Council will be asked to fork over $2,140 each to have a ballot statement printed. The cost for the same service two years ago was $581. The city blames the increased cost on a new federal law that requires the county to print the ballot statements in English, Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese and Tagalog.

No candidate is required to buy a ballot statement, a half-page biography that appears in pamphlets mailed to registered voters, but a candidate who doesn't shouldn't expect to win.

While it would be ideal if voters familiarized themselves with the candidates by attending public forums or speaking directly with them, it's fair to say that most don't and that many rely on the ballot statements when deciding whom to vote for.

In order to have fair and balanced representation on the city council, every candidate, regardless of means, should be able to get his or her message out in five languages.

But, at a cost of over $2,000, not every candidate will have this access. This fee may not seem like much to the three candidates who raised over $15,000 each in the 2002 election, but it would sure look like a lot to candidates modeling themselves after Council member Greg Perry. In 2002, Perry spent just $7,000 on his campaign (about $4,000 of which he said was on a mailer that voters received too late).

Two other candidates in 2002 spent even less than Perry, both choosing to stay under a $1,000 limit. Whether they had the means to spend more on their campaigns is irrelevant -- the point is, it costs a lot to be a viable candidate. But it should not cost a lot of money to simply run for public office and tell voters who you are, even though it clearly is expensive to actively campaign.

A solution would be to have the city of Mountain View pay at least half, if not the entire cost, of the candidates' ballot statements. After all, it would be in the best interest of its citizens, regardless of their native languages, to be able to make an educated decision about who should lead their government.

If there were 10 candidates, the city would need to spend only $21,400 to cover them all, or $10,700 to pay half their fees. And with municipal elections coming only once every two years, the overall impact to the city would be nearly negligible.

The city of Mountain View should assume the responsibility of providing its citizens a balanced slate of candidates from which to choose and cover the cost of ballot statements.

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