Here's the April 2022 edition of the Speak Up for Good Government newsletter. Regardless of which holiday(s) you celebrate, I hope yours has been good.
This month’s newsletter focuses primarily on these two guiding principles:
The graph below shared by Dr. Steven Kull, Director of the Program for Public Consultation (PPC) at the University of Maryland, at February’s webinar for the American Society for Quality’s (ASQ) Government Division is one illustration of the severe erosion of trust in our government.
Although I could not find similar infographics to reflect the decline in trust of our electoral processes and decline in trust of the information we receive, I have seen reports that reflect a bipartisan erosion of trust in both of these items.
Shortly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, I personally witnessed much of the confusion, misinformation, and disinformation that is fueling this distrust. I heard differing statements from close friends and family regarding the cause of the war, I witnessed uncertainty on whether to believe the Russian or Ukranian narrative, and heard many different perspectives on the cause of high gas prices, and our ability to counter the high gas prices.
Most people don't have the time or interest in wading through the many sources of information available. Most of us are inclined to gravitate towards sources that confirm our perspective, and many of us get so frustrated that we simply "tune out".
Here are links to information about the expansion of NATO and relations with Russia, about Russia's Commodity Exports, and an article about what it would take to replace Russian Imports. This information is readily available and easy to find, but doing so can be very time-consuming.
In the months ahead, I plan to take a media literacy course and hope to share some simple techniques with our subscribers.
The American Society for Quality (ASQ) Center for Electoral Quality and Integrity (CEQI) is working on the development of quality standards that can be leveraged to objectively determine the extent to which electoral processes make it "easy to vote and hard to cheat". The goal is to have a draft standard in place for the 2024 election that can be used to assess the degree to which state and local election processes meet voter expectations and can be used to assess the "maturity" of state and local election processes. I will be participating in and promoting this work.
Earlier this month the CEQI leader and I were fortunate to have a conversation with leaders from Issue One. Issue One is actively working on bipartisan legislative solutions to improve our election system. We look forward to ongoing communication and collaboration on our respective efforts. Both the legislative approach and the development and adoption of an objective standard are long-term projects that will take patience and perseverance.
Trust in the information that we receive, and the ability to freely and fairly cast our votes based on information we receive are cornerstones to an effective democracy.
I want to once again remind everyone how fragile democracy can be and how important it is to protect our democracy here at home! I found this editorial on the Ukraine war in the April 7 edition of the Solon, Ohio community paper very poignant.
Have a great month.
Allan
Thanks Allan for your thoughtful presentation. I have two general comments. First Comment: addressing your bar chart on trust in government, I think one of the reasons for the severe erosion in trust is that it has become a primary political and tactical strategy to sow distrust in general, whether for deserved or, in most cases, fictitious reasons, in order to make a challenging candidate/sitting leader/party appear as a proverbial white knight. Until the political marketing strategy thesis returns to the affirmative focus of what a candidate/leader/party will attempt to do and why that is defensible and righteous for the People, I fear the trust chart will not improve. Second Comment: Just who are "The People"? I would subm…