In November, voters in Berne will have no choice on who will lead their town. The Berne Democratic Committee has put up no slate.

In a front-page story last month, our Hilltown reporter Noah Zweifel broke that news along with the Democratic committee’s belief that, since only two board seats are up for re-election, Democrats would not be able to secure a majority on the GOP-controlled town board so their efforts would be wasted.

Over decades in the Hilltowns, which still has far more enrolled Democrats than Republicans — Berne has 791 Democrats and 577 Republicans — we have covered many boards where a single Republican made a significant difference: Jack Milner in Westerlo, Henry Whipple in Knox, and Rudy Stempel in Berne come quickly to mind.

When a board has members with divergent views, the public benefits. There is more discussion of plans and policies as different viewpoints are shared.

We can remember covering single-party boards in the Hilltowns — all Democrats at that time — where a monthly town board meeting would last less than 10 minutes. Such lock-step governance benefits no one.

Even after a red wave swept over the rural Helderberg Hilltowns in 2016 with Donald Trump’s candidacy, Berne still had a lone Democrat on its town board, Joel Willsey, who, despite harassment, made a difference in relaying to the public inner workings of the board.

We know running for office and serving on a board in a small town can be hard. The Enterprise, in covering local elections for well over a century, can attest to the truth of the axiom: The smaller the town, the nastier the politics. Differences too often become personal attacks.

In his July 15 story, Zweifel detailed some of the nastiness in the last Berne town elections two years ago: allegations of animal abuse against the Democratic highway superintendent candidate, farmer Barbara Kennedy, which the police proved false, and false information about the Democratic town clerk candidate Jean Guarino’s criminal history, who was arrested in the 1990s for a theft committed by her ex-husband.

Zweifel’s story also detailed the many scandals since the GOP took power in 2020, ranging from not following the recommendations of the state comptroller in handling finances to having former Democratic supervisor Kevin Crosier forcibly removed from a crowded public hearing without cause, ordering sheriff’s deputies to escort him out.

Certainly, as letter writers pointed out last week, this highlights the need to give voters a choice.

Earlier this year, we did a podcast interview with Peggy Filkins Warner, who is nearing the century mark in age. She spent her lifetime working to see that Berne voters would have a choice.

Warner was born in the Filkins farmhouse on Joslyn School Road in 1930, in an era when not a lot of women were involved in politics. Warner, however, became the longtime chair of Berne’s Republican Committee and also served as vice chair of the Albany County Republican Committee.

“Dan O’Connell controlled all the Hilltowns and everybody had to be a Democrat,” said Warner of the political machine that dominated Albany from 1922 until the 1970s. “It really made a difference in your tax assessment.”

Describing her commitment to the Republican Party matter-of-factly, Warner said, “I knew that things were not right in Berne. And so I just started doing what you should do. You know, I firmly believe that everyone has the right in the United States to choose the party they want to be part of. And that’s the way it should be. But, at the time that I grew up, you had to be a Democrat in Albany County.”

What carried her through all those years, Warner said, was a rock-bottom belief in what it means to be a citizen of the United States.

“I strongly believe that our country gives people the right to choose however they want to believe in any possible way from politics to religion,” she said.

That core belief and her lifelong will to pursue it came from her upbringing, she said.

“Being the oldest in my family, I guess I had the responsibility,” she said of leading. As a young girl, Warner learned to hunt. “My father wanted a boy … so he took me hunting,” she said. “I learned to track every animal that we have up in the hills way before I ever had a gun.

“And the first year that I was able to shoot with a shotgun, my grandfather — he was pretty tough — he taught me: If you don’t know where everybody is, you don’t shoot. And, if you can’t take the first shot, there’s always tomorrow.”

Warner was taught to kill a deer with just one shot — in the neck.

“Some of my best friends have completely different ideas than I do, and we discuss them but we don’t get angry at each other …,” Warner. “It’s fun to debate your ideas and then you might get a good idea from somebody if you listen.”

That is what is missing in Berne today just as it is missing in national politics — the civil discourse that allows for give and take, for compromise that can lead a town or a nation forward.

We wrote on this page just two years ago, during the last round of town elections, after Westerlo Democrats cross-endorsed the GOP choices, that the foundation of our democracy is a citizen’s right to vote. That is how the people remain sovereign — in control of their leaders and thereby their destiny.

When we vote, we tell our leaders what we want the government to do. In a two-party system, which is what the United States has, choices are clearly delineated. That is why The Enterprise goes to great lengths before every election to interview candidates on the issues — so that voters can inform themselves and choose platforms they believe will be good for their community.

Unlike in many European countries that have a multi-party system, where voters can choose candidates whose views closely match their own, in a two-party system, voters are often left choosing the lesser to two evils.

But, if that party wins, the voter has a strong chance that the platform voted for will be enacted since it is not dependent on a coalition of parties. This distinction was defined in the last half of the 20th Century by E.E. Schattschneider, an American political scientist.

The people are powerless if the political enterprise is not competitive, Schattschneider wrote in “The Semisovereign People: A Realist’s View of Democracy in America.”

The problem of uncontested elections is nationwide. An analysis done by the Associated Press of the 2016 elections showed millions of Americans voting for state representatives in that election had no choice: In 42 percent of the elections, candidates had no major-party opponents.

The percentage of people living in legislative districts without electoral choices has been generally rising over the past several decades, the AP said, citing gerrymandering as a major cause — that is, districts being drawn to deliberately favor one party over another.

We’ve seen in the two villages we cover — Altamont and Voorheesville — how low voter turnout is when there is no choice.

The bedrock of our democracy is compromise.

The Library of Congress describes “the essential political compromise in the creation of the United States government” — amending our Constitution to include the Bill of Rights. Even though Federalists believed that individual rights were fully protected by state and common law, they knew that Anti-Federalists would never embrace the new Constitution until amendments protecting specific rights were adopted.

Our new nation was polarized with the Federalists wanting a strong national government to preserve order and the Anti-Federalists promoting strong state governments instead. Clearly articulated views from each side led to worthwhile compromise.

So, as one of its first orders of business in 1789, Congress passed the 10 amendments that preserve our individual rights and liberties.

“The Conventions of a number of the States having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added,” says the Preamble to the Bill of Rights.

Yes, our nation is polarized now and so is the town of Berne. We will only be able to move forward if we offer voters a choice and then engage in civil discourse to reach the needed understanding to compromise.

Remember the wise words of Peggy Warner: “You might get a good idea from somebody if you listen.”