Open Primaries, Play by Play

Unrivaled in popularity perhaps only by curling is the issue of open primaries. I had a letter published in the Davis County Clipper today clarifying the finer points of unaffiliated voter registration and voting in Utah Primary elections. As luck would have it, the letter appeared in print next to the bi-monthly left/right column Her Point / His Point by Dawn Brandvold and Blaine Nichols. The column is aptly named "Political parties should stop playing games and just cooperate"

You can read the links for yourself, and I encourage you to do so, but if you have perservered this far and just want the highlights so you will have enough time for the curling highlights, here is the play by play action summary for you.

The page opens up with Davis County independent Randy Miller thumping for a non-partisan option to be added to Utah primary elections allowing the non-partisan Utah majority to advance worthy candidates regardless of party. The ball rims in and out with just under 12 to go here in the 2nd quarter.

Brandvold clears the rebound and speculates that maybe this is the year that independents will support Sam Granato over the yet to be determined tossup between Republicans Mike Lee and Tim Bridgewater. Maybe, but from where I'm sitting I see a lot of independent voters headed for the concession stands on this one.

Nichols inbounds to himself and crosses the half court line. Nichols holds up, yo-yo's left and heads for the extreme right. 19 on the shot clock, Nichols pulls up and shoots for 3. Airball, and that is the Morgan Jeweler's play of the game. When asked, Nichols says "Until recently Republicans held “open primaries”, encouraging everyone to show up and vote. It became apparent that those primaries were being infiltrated by Democrats fruitlessly trying to swing elections to the more liberal candidate. One day, Republicans woke up, slapped their collective forehead and said, “Hey, Why don’t we close our primaries so Democrats can’t play games?”

I guess now that 'their' primaries are closed they are encouraging everyone to not show up and vote? We'll have to go to overtime on that one.

(What Mr. Nichols doesn't know is that we have secretly switched the voter registration of thousands of Utah Voters, and less than 9% of all voters in Utah are registered as 'Democrats', so the extent of their 'game playing' is really quite limited.)

The buzzer sounds and that's it folks. You declare the winner and let me know please. Hopefully in the end it is the people of Utah that win. I mean, for Pete's sake, I'm tired of losing to the dog gone Washington Generals.