I attended a meeting of the Democratic club in my North Jersey town recently and asked if we had a candidate for town committee this year. Unsurprisingly, we didn’t, as has been the case repeatedly in the predominantly Republican town. Someone pointed out we could make a write-in effort and cheerfully read aloud my name, from the paper tag on my chest. That could be taken as a joke but also a suggestion. My ballot arrived a few days later, and I wrote in my own name, and then encouraged others to do so on the club’s Facebook page.
I don’t expect to win, but even a modest impact on the voting results would be a step toward a future candidacy with a name (mine or someone else’s) printed on the ballot. Getting on the primary ballot in a town of our size would, under current law, require 50 signatures from residents registered with the party (or so I understand; one’s advised to contact the town clerk for precise requirements, an indicator of the system’s opacity). It would be a positive development if Wyckoff, NJ, had competitive elections rather than entrenched one-party rule, a transition already successfully undertaken in Hungary.
To count, write-in votes must have the candidate’s correct legal name. In my case: Kenneth Silber, not Ken. Lisa Murkowski won a US Senate seat from Alaska in 2010 based on a write-in vote, aided by voter recognition as an incumbent, and beating a Tea Party–backed Republican. A list of candidates posted by the Alaska Division of Elections drew complaints from her opponents, who’d hoped to benefit from voter difficulty in spelling “Murkowski.”
My own politics, long discussed at Splice Today, are centrist. I’m a former Republican, who left the party when Donald Trump clinched the nomination in 2016. I became an independent (non-affiliated voter in New Jersey’s parlance) but joined the Democrats after January 6, 2021, revolted by the effort to overturn the election result. Recent years have shown democracy’s more fragile than most people realize, in my view. Threats to democratic institutions come from left as well as right, but at present predominantly from the Trump administration, with its assaults on civil liberties, separation of powers, and the integrity of elections. Personalistic, one-man rule is not only authoritarian but also prone to policy disasters such as the world-historical blunder of launching a war against Iran.
Neither democratic socialism nor identity-politics wokeism has any appeal to me. I’m for capitalism, though I think it needs to be modified by regulation and supplemented by social programs. Similarly, I’ve a broadly favorable view of science and technology (and have spent much of my career as a science journalist), but I’m not an enthusiast of what’s been dubbed “TESCREAL” (Transhumanism, Extropianism, Singularitarianism, Cosmism, Rationalism, Effective Altruism, Longtermism), a bundle of ideologies that overhype AI and other technologies in seeking sweeping transformations of humanity and the world. I’m an Episcopalian and serve on my church’s vestry, a body that oversees church business and historically acted in large part as local government in England and the American colonies.
I’m not a “regular guy.” You won’t get any “man of the people” bullshit from me. I read and review a lot of books, rarely watch sports, and have obscure interests in science and history. I’m a dual citizen of Austria and working on my German. A second-degree black belt in a Korean-based form of karate, I’m an oddity in martial arts class in that I’m 40 or more years older than most of the participants.
On the rare occasions when a Democrat has been elected to my town’s committee, they’ve come under pressure to switch to the Republicans, on grounds the new official won’t be able to accomplish anything unless they’re part of the ruling party. One putative Democrat did so. I can state, as an absolute guarantee, that such pressure won’t work on me.
—Follow Kenneth Silber on Substack & Bluesky. He’s written for Splice Today since 2018.