(This is one of a weekly series of posts entitled “A Centrist’s Platform”. The complete collection of Centrist’s Platform posts is available on a single page, or via a special RSS feed.)
Although this isn’t a platform item per sé, with Super Tuesday coming tomorrow, it’s time to raise my perennial gripe about partisan primary elections.
If there were one quick, “easy” change I could make to the American political system, there’s a good chance that it would be to bring an end to closed primaries for which taxpayer resources are consumed to support.
When I go to the polls tomorrow, I’m going to have to make my mark on a GOP ballot. I have no choice in this (other than to simply not vote), but I don’t mind because I had the foresight to officially reregister as a Republican back in October, before the 90-day party change deadline.
If tomorrow, we were holding only a Democratic primary, I would not be able to vote…even though it’s my tax dollars that are being spent to open the polling place, set-up and maintain the ballot booths and readers, and to print and count the ballots.
If I weren’t registered as a partisan, or if I were one of the dozen-or-so folks registered with a minor party, I also wouldn’t be permitted to vote.
Now, I can appreciate and accept the idea that political parties can make the rules as to who participates in their elections. After all, within reason, we do recognize freedom of association within this country.
However, such freedom of association generally applies when talking about internal operations of a private organization. A major party consuming municipal resources either for free or under the pretence of merely a token payment doesn’t exactly meet a common sense definition of “private organization” or “internal operations”
In a nutshell: if I’m paying for an election, I ought to be allowed to vote in it.