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Republican survey isn’t a litmus test

While some of the Altoona Mirror’s frequent criticisms of Blair County Republican Chair Lois Kaneshiki have been well deserved, Russ O’Reilly’s article slamming her for drafting and circulating a school board candidate survey was slanted and unfair.

Hollidaysburg Area School Board elections have long been an exercise in opacity, something many borough residents would like to change.

As it stands, most voters have nothing more than yard signs upon which to base decisions at the ballot box.

The sole purpose of the survey — drafted not by Kaneshiki alone, but by a 10-member Republican subcommittee that includes me — was to raise the quality of political discourse ahead of an important primary election.

To assert that the survey was created to exclude candidates who don’t support Kaneshiki’s agenda is simply untrue.

The party chair has no such power, and neither does the subcommittee.

Our questions were designed to elicit robust responses on essential policy, including administration, discipline, special education, curriculum, teacher contracts and taxes.

Even if the queries have a conservative tilt — we’re the Republican Party, after all — the published responses are enormously valuable to all voters, including Democrats.

By compelling candidates to address the salient issues of the day, the election ceases to be a beauty contest and becomes something meaningful.

Also, the only candidates “culled” from the ballot this year are those who failed to comply with state election law. A failure to file a public statement of financial interest is rather more than a “paperwork technicality.”

That’s why, for example, the teachers union was able to toss three conservative candidates from the Hollidaysburg School Board ballot in 2015 and another Republican candidate this year.

This adversarial process may not be the most amiable feature of our democracy, but it is an essential one nonetheless, where carelessness is punished and competence rewarded.

Richard Latker

Hollidaysburg

(The writer is a member of the Republican Candidates and Campaign Committee.)

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