With all of the attention that has been lavished on dark
money pouring into the election system, as well as the voter suppression
efforts taking place in states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Florida (and
rightfully so), comparatively little attention has been paid to the benefits
that early voting has been bringing into this year’s election.
Early voting is such an integral part of our democracy now
that President Barack Obama became the first candidate for the office to ever
cast his ballot early, doing so in Chicago during a recent stop-over on a
cross-country tour promoting his re-election bid.
Here in Arizona, early voting by mail has also had a great
benefit, because a voter can sit at home in front of his or her laptop and fill
out the various propositions and judicial retentions without feeling rushed in
the voting booth, or being forced to bring a slate to the polling place to keep
all of their votes straight on each measure.
This ability to carefully measure decisions has done me a
world of good as a voter, but there is one proposition in particular that has
given me pause. It is Proposition 121, and it has been hotly contested in the
state ever since it gathered enough signatures to make an appearance on the
ballot. The measure is modeled after the “top-two” primary system that
California recently adopted. Basically, instead of having primaries in August
with each party fielding a slate of candidates and having registered Republicans
and Democrats decide who will represent them on the November ballot, the
primary ballot would instead feature every single candidate from every single
party for each office, and the top-two vote getters, regardless of party
affiliation, would appear on the November ballot.
Naturally, this kind of seismic shift in the way that
elections are conducted in the state has been met with a huge amount of both
support and opposition. Organizations like the Arizona Republic newspaper and
the Tucson Hispanic Chamber of Commerce have both come out in support of the
bill, and there are a few key reasons as to why there has been so much support
of the measure.
For starters, the theory is that the top-two primary would
cause candidates to run more moderate campaigns than they are currently
running. In today’s Tea Party era, candidates are trying to appeal to more
fringe bases of the party that actually turn out to vote in the primaries, and
you are seeing the results in places like Delaware, where Christine O’Donnell
made a splash in the 2010 Senate race before losing in the general election.
You also have long-standing officials like Senator Orrin Hatch, who isn’t
exactly a liberal Republican, getting defeated by someone even further to the
right than he is politically.
As the dialogue surrounding politics has coarsened, this is
surely one of the reasons why, and the potential moderation of candidates could
go a long way to making discourse a bit more civil.
The move would also be a practical one for the state of
Arizona specifically, as a third of the registered voters in the state are
registered independents. They actually outnumber registered Democrats in the
state, and despite this, they are being shut out as part of the current
electoral system. Instead, they are being stuck with only one chance to express
their opinions instead of two, and that seems pretty unfair in a system that is
supposed to respect the will of the majority of its citizens, and ignoring the
voices of a group that is larger than one of the two major parties seems a bit
silly.
Even though those are a couple of pretty compelling reasons
to vote for the measure, there are some groups, including the Republican Party
of Arizona and the Young Democrats of Arizona, who are opposed to it. The first
argument many point to is that a potential consequence could be a smaller
number of candidates from each party running in the primary. The reason for
this wouldn’t be because of the moderation that we could expect with the bill,
but rather because of the fact that each party wouldn’t want to split their vote
and potentially risk not having a candidate on the November ballot. That
potential hindrance to participation by qualified candidates is definitely
something that needs to be weighed carefully, because all the moderation in the
world shouldn’t cause less choices, rather than more, for a voter.
Another serious downside would be the negative impact it
would have on independent voters. Yes, they would actually get a voice in the
August primaries, but they would also have to deal with the fact that there
would be significantly less, if not none at all, third party candidates that
would make the cut for the November ballot. Candidates from the Green Party and
Libertarian Party currently enjoy spots on the ballot alongside Democrats and
Republicans, but under this system, they would not be guaranteed that same
right to participation in November. That again cuts down on the number of
potential choices for voters in the state, and is something to keep in mind.
Proposition 121 is the only measure on my ballot that I have
not filled out, and as you can see by the arguments on both sides of the issue,
there is a reason for this. This is certainly not a matter of cut and dried
political principle for me. I have been in favor of changing election law for
years now, including publically financing elections and the re-definition of
corporations via Constitutional amendment so that they are not considered “people”
, and therefore not eligible to the same rights to free speech (ie donating money)
that I am. I have also argued for eliminating the party designations on
ballots, so that people can’t just look down a ballot and mark off each person
with a D or an R next to their name.
All of those things in mind, you would think that I would
have decided to vote for the bill. Even though I am a firm believer that our
political discourse needs to be improved, and moderating the types of
candidates we end up getting to choose from in November could go a long way
toward achieving that goal, I instead find myself voting against Proposition
121. I despise the notion of having two candidates from the same party on the
November ballot, because I don’t really consider that much of a choice. To me,
it’s like picking between robin’s egg blue and sky blue when choosing a color
to paint a room. There isn’t enough of a contrast between the two candidates in
that scenario to justify voting for either one of them.
In addition, I like the idea of third parties having more of
a voice in the primaries, but I still feel as though they will be overwhelmed
by the partisans in this new open primary, and their candidates will not find
their way onto the November ballot a good majority of the time. That is bad for
our democracy to have limited choices in a manner like that, and in good
conscience, I cannot vote for a measure that does that.
In the end, I am going to have to get over my distaste of
agreeing with Republican Governor Jan Brewer and the Arizona Republican Party,
and I am going to have to vote with my conscience instead of my party
affiliation. The electoral process in this state and this country is in need of
some serious reform, but this measure is not the way to do that as far as I’m
concerned.
Even though I have said that I am planning to vote against
this Proposition, I am leaving that part of my ballot unfilled until I leave to
drop it off at the polling place on Tuesday morning. If you think that I am
overlooking a potentially decision-changing argument for this bill, feel free
to comment on this piece, or to yell at me via phone, Twitter, or Facebook. I
am all about changing my opinion when more compelling evidence is presented
against it, so you have four days to impress me with your ferocity and
intellect.
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