Thursday, May 27, 2010

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.

Monday, May 24, 2010

A time for thanks

Andrea and I hosted a barbecue Saturday for friends of the Utah League of independent Voters. We wish to extend a special thanks to our call in guest Dr. Omar Ali of Towson University in Maryland who visited with us about open primaries equating the practice of closed primary elections to a broader application of Jim Crow practices upon a larger group--the large bloc of independent voters outside of the 2 party establishment.

Special thanks also to our other candidate class guests:
Dave Glissmeyer (independent for Utah's 2nd Congressional District), Joe Puente (independent for Utah's 3rd Congressional District), Jared Stratton (Libertarian for Utah's 1st Congressional District), Morgan Bowen (Democrat for Utah's 1st Congressional District & Ross Perot supporter back in the day), Burke Larsen, independent voter and Davis School Board candidate for precinct 6.

Blogger Nancy Hanks was also a distant guest who live blogged about our event: The Hankster

Dr. Ali commented on a video which appears on independentvoting.org regarding open primaries. Here it is, enjoy.



about the author:
Randy Miller is the founder and President of the Utah League of independent Voters. He lives in Syracuse Utah and is an independent candidate for Davis County Surveyor in 2010.

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

A Crisis of Democracy? Voter Turnout in the Pennsylvania and Kentucky Primary Elections

...is the non-vote a vote of no confidence in the two-party state and duopoly system of government? Less than a third of all voters participated in the Kentucky and Pennsylvania primary elections. Democratic and Republican US Senate candidates are capable of scoring "major upsets" with the support of just 7% of registered voters. Of course, the apologists of the ruling parties explain such facts away by alternately, and contradictorily, asserting the existence of voter apathy or voter contentment. But is this not a crisis of democracy? read more