The Hard Truth: Between the Ballot and the Boot

By Toledo Tribune

Lets take a deeper look at a previous Hard truth: The Keys and the Blame

Our last Hard Truth column compared electing government officials to hiring a store manager—raising questions about accountability, oversight, and public engagement. Today, we continue the conversation with a deeper look at what happens betweenelection day and the next campaign cycle.

There’s a sensible argument folks like to make when we talk about the mess of governance, and it goes like this: running a government isn’t like running a business because the manager of a business answers to one person—the owner—and an elected official answers to thousands, maybe millions, most of whom disagree about just about everything.

That’s a fair point. It’s hard to argue with the truth that no representative can please everyone. Government is not a hardware store, and you can’t run it like one. But even if the analogy isn’t perfect, it still tells us something true—not about policy, but about responsibility.

See, the mistake we keep making as a public is acting like our only tools are hiring and firing—voting someone in, and then sitting back to see how they do until the next election, when we decide whether or not to give them the boot. It’s like we’ve convinced ourselves that our role ends at the ballot box, and if we don’t like the way things turn out, we can always blame the manager.

But what about everything in between?

The hard truth is this: good governance isn’t born on Election Day, it’s built in the slow days that follow. And if we’re not showing up—if we’re not offering vision, feedback, challenge, and support—then what we’re really doing is neglecting our own business. Government, after all, is us. It’s our store, whether we like what’s on the shelves or not.

Now, some will say, “But the system doesn’t listen.” And that’s true, too. Bureaucracy can be a fortress. Sometimes it’s polite, smiles and nods, and then files your concern under “Public Input” before resuming business as usual. I’ve heard the stories—reasonable folks offering smart, grounded advice only to be ignored while taxpayers foot the bill for the fallout.

But if we let that cynicism turn to silence, we’ve lost before we’ve begun.

Democracy depends not just on leaders who lead well, but on a public that keeps watch—not with pitchforks, but with purpose. We need people who write the emails, attend the meetings, ask the hard questions, and offer the wisdom that only comes from living here, paying the bills, and knowing how things really work.

We don’t need to wait for recall elections to demand integrity. We don’t need scandal before we start asking for direction. If a store’s in trouble, you don’t wait until it’s bankrupt to step in—you check the books, talk to the staff, look at the shelves, and ask the hard questions early and often. You don’t throw the manager out first—you show up first.

So no, you’re not just dreaming if you think governance could work better with more public input. You’re remembering what this was supposed to be all along. A shared project. A community concern. A store where we all have a stake in the inventory.

We don’t have to agree on everything. But we do have to care enough to stay engaged between the ballot and the boot.

And that, my friends, is the hard truth.