If you’ve been reading the papers lately, you’ve probably noticed political mini-scandals popping up with regularity this month. Wife beater? Time to resign! Juvenile conviction? How can such a person effectively represent us! Can’t be bothered to vote in primaries? Clearly, this candidate doesn’t care about democracy.

Where there’s smoke, there’s fire! Or so the letters to the editor would have you believe. They apparently have worked, since all of these candidates have under performed in the primary. But let’s dig a little deeper into these stories.

Geoff Simpson is running for re-election to the state legislature in the 47th district, and was charged with gross misdemeanor assault on his ex-wife last month, and pled not guilty. From the news reports, it sounded like both parties were in a shoving and shouting match, and it’s up to a judge and maybe a jury to decide if Mr. Simpson crossed the line into criminal assault.

The prosecutor believes that there’s enough evidence to prove it, but if we only let the prosecutors decide guilt or innocence, then we’re going to have to build a lot more jails.

Fans of his opponents were quick to jump on the anti-Simpson crusade, calling for his immediate resignation, while also praising the other two Republican candidates. I think my favorite line was, “I believe if you cannot manage your own family you have no business in politics” as if our elected representatives are supposed to have authority over their ex-spouses.

Just the opposite is true, though. Public figures have even less influence because of the potential threat to their image. It’s easy for someone to manipulate them through the press. Even if it didn’t happen in this case, that potential threat does sit in the back of the public figure’s mind, and will influence their behavior (Mr. Simpson even mentioned this type of manipulation in his public statement).

We don’t know what really happened in that hospital, and I wouldn’t have voted for Mr. Simpson anyway if he represented my district, but reading the Chicken Little attitude of a few letter writers almost make me want to support him, even if just to defend the principle of “innocent until proven guilty”.

In Sumner, state Senate candidate Matt Richardson is also under fire for his juvenile conviction that was later dismissed. Normally, newspapers don’t publish records of juvenile crimes, but the Seattle Times thought otherwise, and used copies of those records that were made before they were sealed.

He’s also being accused of inappropriately using his Sumner City Council e-mail account to send three dozen personal messages to a city volunteer. The Chicken Little letter writer in this case previously worked for his election primary opponent, Pam Roach, and claims, “That kind of official conduct does not bode well for Richardson’s ability to effectively represent the 31st Legislative District in the state Senate.”

The same tagline is brought out for all of these folks, “Mr. Screwup can no longer effectively represent our district.” This is the key phrase you should remember, so you can ignore the rest of their argument.

I worked as a campaign manager for a local candidate last year, and was regularly offered information about opponents who violated minor zoning issues, or didn’t get a permit for this or that. I think the expectation was that I would trumpet the issue in the usual way, but instead I ended up ignoring it.

Why? Those types of attacks are petty, and a distraction from the real issues. Does any candidate really say, “I’m going to run for public office against Mr. Screwup because he repaved his parking lot without a permit”? Of course not. They run because of fundamental differences in philosophy, and believe that they have better solutions to their district’s problems.

Our expectation of perfection for elected officials is an impossible standard. We’ve all screwed up at some point in our lives, and it’s not in our best interests to blacklist candidates who are simply imperfect humans (but let’s continue putting the convicted wife beaters in jail, please). Every single candidate on the ballot has dirty little secrets that have yet to surface. The challenge this November is to pick a candidate who you hope will do the best job representing your interests.