Commissioners fail test of leadership

by Wayne Adair, Hamilton

On February 23, elements of the John Birch Society of Ravalli County met with our commissioners to angrily demand that all ballots in the future be hand counted. The turnout was so large, the meeting had to be moved from the county meeting room to the auditorium of Hamilton’s Bedford Building.

That day, our three commissioners had the opportunity to confront a challenging situation and show true leadership. They failed.

Every Bircher was there because they insist that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump. Commissioners Dan Huls, Jeff Burrows and Greg Chilcot could have explained to them that the election was not stolen, that every conspiracy theory claiming so has been refuted over and over, and that in the early morning hours of Jan. 7, 2021, the U.S. Congress certified the electoral college vote and Joe Biden was recognized as the legitimately elected president. Trump’s attempted coup of Jan. 6 had failed.

But the commissioners didn’t speak truth to the power of an angry group. Our county leaders agreed with the members of the John Birch Society. Worse, Chilcott enabled their fantasy by parroting Trump’s self-serving lie. Our longest serving commissioner, to his shame, repeated the fiction that election workers pulled “suitcases of ballots” from under tables in the State Farm Center in Atlanta and counted them secretly in the middle of the night. Those bogus ballots gave the Georgia win to Biden, Chilcott would have you believe.

The Republican Secretary of State in Georgia investigated that myth. Those mysterious suitcases were actually legitimate ballot carriers and vote counting proceeded as it should have, live-streamed and observed. No significant voter fraud was found. 

For spreading this Trump-inspired falsehood, Greg Chilcott owes an apology to every non-MAGA voter in Ravalli County – and there are thousands of them, like me.

To readers who have made it this far, I thank you for your patience and invite you to stop rolling your eyes at my apparent naivete. I know that even if the commissioners had taken a principled and truthful position with the Birchers, those zealots would not have been convinced. I remain fully aware MAGA-World is a sealed biosystem where neither truth, logic nor civility enters. The only “facts” that matter in that landscape are what Trump says, despite how outlandish they are. In that world the only fair and accurate elections are the ones where Trump or his peers win. 

Of course, that is not how the real world works.

Still, my criticism of the commissioners remains. Why do I think they should have countered falsehoods with facts knowing their message would have fallen on deaf ears? Because our leaders are elected to do what is right, not what is popular.