In today’s Dayton Daily News, Betty Smith, deputy director of the Montgomery County Board of Elections, made our fair community look like a bunch of backassward Luddites with her quote:

Longtime Dayton activist Esrati to run for Congress
Turner and former Waynesville Mayor Charles W. Sanders, a Democrat, have taken out petitions from the Montgomery County Board of Elections as well.Esrati said he got his petitions off the Internet, not from the board.

Betty Smith, deputy director of the board, warned that online sources sometimes have outdated versions of petitions posted and the board will not validate signatures gathered on old documents.

Well, if Betty and the rest of the BOE were actually professionally qualified to do their jobs instead of being the beneficiaries of political patronage jobs, maybe the Montgomery County Board of Elections could have current versions of the forms on their website- like the Franklin County Board of Elections- where we linked to from the Grassroots Dayton site to make those petitions available to EVERYONE.

You see, if you provide forms as PDF’s available as print on demand, you never have to throw out the old ones Betty. And better yet, the forms can actually be filled out by COMPUTER, so the information in the forms is all the same and legible. But, don’t worry, we’ll be in to compare our “new fangled forms” with your personal stash on Monday, just to make sure you don’t try to invalidate citizens signatures on some technicality that you love to dream up. We know it’s not really about the people getting an opportunity to decide who runs- but about you being the gatekeeper in charge of it all.

Maybe, it’s time for Betty to learn about PDF’s and the Internet.

Or maybe it’s time for her to get a new line of work.

I highly encourage everyone who feels a passion to serve, especially, retired Army Lt. Col. Victor Harris who was snubbed by the Montgomery County Democratic Party with his wish to run in the Ohio 40th, to download the petitions, get the signatures and run.

I’ll even throw in this special offer to all the Democratic candidates who bypass the party apparatus- you can come take my next Websitetology seminar for free to help you use the Internet most effectively in your campaign.