County Commission | The Magazine April 2018 | Page 9

FROM THE COVER
stock vault .net | Nicolas Raym
ond
Choctaw County Alabama Courthouse | RuralSW
Alabama (Billy Milstead ) | CC BY 3.0
Often times when people set out to understand the fundamentals of democracy
in the United States of America, they go to Washington, D.C. They take in magnificent
monuments, visit all three branches of government and gaze at the famous parchment
that started it all – the Declaration of Independence.
But those sights paint an incomplete picture.
Democracy doesn’t work without the Pennington Fire Department, Tate’s Chapel
CME Church, school gyms, community centers and thousands of other polling places
throughout the country.
And can a picture of “government of the people, by the people, for the people” truly
be complete without including those chilly November evenings when people gather at
the county courthouse, watching and waiting as votes from one precinct after another
are compiled?
“The citizen vote is the foundation upon which our democracy is built,”
wrote the National Association of Counties, and that foundation relies heavily on
county government.
Want to find the heart of democracy? It beats loudly at the local level.
COUNTY COMMISSION | 9