Most research on education governance begin with the premise that school boards are the natural default and that locally elected school boards must be defended. This chapter demonstrates why this assumption is wrong. I show that: (1) most voters don’t have school-aged kids and thus lack sufficient “skin in the game” to prioritize academic achievement; (2) voters don’t hold school board members accountable for student learning; and (3) local school board elections are uncompetitive, with nearly 80 percent of the turnover driven by incumbent retirements rather than Election Day defeats. Several case studies, focused on school districts in San Francisco (California) and Easta Ramapo (New York) illustrate why broken elections have negative impacts on education quality. At best, school board elections are extremely low-turnout affairs, in which a small and highly unrepresentative group of adults impose their parochial, self-interested, and often uninformed views on the rest of the community. At its worst, school district governance devolves into an absolute clown show, where performative politics takes precedence over serious policy meant to serve the academic interests of students.