PCO elections give power to neighborhoods

Your editorial calling for elimination of public PCO elections is deeply disturbing. [“Keep PCO races off ballot,” Opinion, Sept. 26.]

PCO elections are the best ways to get neighborhoods involved in the political process. You point out that “In 66 percent of the 13,517 PCO elections statewide (half for Republican offices and half for Democratic), no one filed.” Using that logic, if only 25 percent of citizens vote in a particular election, maybe we should eliminate elections.

The parties need to work harder to involve neighborhoods and recruit PCOs. To answer your charge that PCO elections put a burden on the taxpayer, I would answer that Democracy is not cheap. The Obama campaign and the tea-party movement are examples of grass-roots politics.

To get rid of PCO elections would take power out of the neighborhoods and into the hands of corporations.

— Mike Barer, Maple Valley