for voting to eliminate straight ticket voting. You can read about the vote here. I have advocated eliminating straight ticket voting for some time. If you’re interested in why, click on "continue reading" and you will find something I wrote on the subject about a year ago. And thanks to Skip and Doug for letting me post to GraniteGrok.
February 20, 2005
Straight ticket voting allows voters to cast a vote for every candidate of either the Democrat or Republican party simply by voting for the party. Supporters of straight ticket voting say it makes voting easier, which encourages turnout. That may be true, but if requiring a voter to judge candidates on their individual merits discourages turnout, then by all means lets discourage turnout.
The purpose of voting is to choose the men and women who are best suited to run the government. In order to make good choices, a voter needs to consider a candidate’s competence, ideology and integrity. Straight ticket voting, at best, encourages consideration only of ideology. It has much less public benefit, therefore, than voting by candidate, which brings into play the other ingredients essential for good public servants.
Also, straight ticket voting is a much less reliable way of gauging ideology than examining a candidate’s stands on the issues, especially in the case of the Republican party. For example, while the state Republican platform is pro-life, a large number of perhaps even a majority of Republican candidates are pro-choice. Thus, anyone voting straight ticket Republican because of the platform’s pro-life plank stands a good chance of ending up disappointed. The same can be said about other issues, which is why the moniker Republican-in-name-only, or RINO, gets so much use. While the Democrat party is far less of a big tent than the Republican Party, not every Democrat marches in lockstep with the party platform either.
Allowing independents to immediately revert back to independent status after voting in a primary, which the law currently allows, is also said to encourage turnout. But, if the paramount goal is to encourage turnout, then Democrats should be able to vote in Republican primaries with the option of immediately reverting back to Democrat status and vice versa. Indeed, why not let everyone vote in both primaries.
There is, of course, a very good reason why voters who are registered as members of one political party cannot vote in another party’s primary. The purpose of a primary is to allow the members of a political party to choose the party’s candidates. Allowing primary voting by members of a different party defeats that purpose. Which is why the law requires that if you are registered as a Democrat or a Republican you must change your political affiliation at least 90 days before the primary to be eligible to vote.
Allowing independents who are not interested in being members of a political party to vote in that party’s primary also defeats the purpose of a primary. And it makes no difference that Democrats and Republicans voting in the other party’s primary may do so for malevolent reasons such as electing the weakest opponent whereas the motives of independents are benign. Whether a voter chooses to legally declare his disassociation from a political party by registering as a member of another party or as an independent, he still shouldn’t be able to negate the votes of those who choose to be party members.
If it is not unreasonable to require someone registered as a Democrat or a Republican to demonstrate 90 days of commitment to the other party in order to vote in its primary, which nobody appears to be disputing, then it is not unreasonable to require independents to make the same type of commitment. To keep the current law simply gives independent voters special rights.
Eliminating straight ticket voting and leveling the playing field between independents and declared voters may decrease voter turnout. But that is exactly why these bills should be passed. Voters who can’t be bothered to consider the individual merits of a candidate should stay home on election day, while the members of a political party should be the ones choosing the party’s candidates.
