posted
And not because she agrees with the party platform. The situation is that she lives in a county that is very solidly Republican to the point that Democrats basically have no say in who gets elected. Theoretically, if there is an election primary where the other party doesn't have a candidate, everyone can vote in the primary no matter what their party, but the Repubs have been floating lame duck candidates on the Dem ticket to prevent this from happening. I wrote about this on this forum a few months a go.
I find this turn of events kind of interesting. I wonder if it's going to turn into a larger trend across the state and nationally, further blurring the lines between the parties, and what it means to be a 'Democrat' or a 'Republican' in these days of gerrymandering and zealous party partisanship.
Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
That seems to be to be a rather serious problem with the local democracy. I'm not sure what can be done, though, short of revolution. Or waiting for the parties to coalesce into one which can then splinter.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
Storm Saxon, she definitely won't be alone. I've known people who registered with the 'other' party to vote in primaries and attend local meetings. Basically, if one party develops a stranglehold, there's no other recourse to having a say in elections.
Posts: 1813 | Registered: Apr 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
Back in high school, my Government & Politics teachers mentioned that he did the same thing. Although he disagreed with the party as a whole, he knew his vote was worthless unless he voted in their primary.
Posts: 291 | Registered: Jun 2002
| IP: Logged |
quote: That seems to be to be a rather serious problem with the local democracy.
Is it a problem? I wonder.
One thing that this forum has discussed is how other parties can make their voices heard in a two party system. Well, what if there was only one party, but everyone got to have a say in that party? Wouldn't that, actually, be the same as having a lot of different parties? I think that it might be.
Another positive result of having only one party to vote for is that it forces people to look at the candidates rather than the party. Everyone will vote along party lines, of course, because there is only one party, but this will be meaningless.
So, while initially it might look to be that democracy is being subverted, in reality, maybe it's being helped.
Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
My county used to only have democrats run in the local elections, so most everyone was registered democrat, even the very right wing conservatives. It actually ended up creating a strange dynamic because it caused the local democratic party to shift to the right...so while "democrats" were getting elected, they were very conservative democrats.
Things have shifted a bit now though, and more republicans run, and those running on democratic tickets are more to the left than in the past...but many people never changed their official party affiliation back to republican...they just changed the party that they vote for. A friend of mine who works for the democratic party said that it annoys a lot of the politicians because the county has such a large percentage of registered democrats, but the republicans generally win.
Posts: 1901 | Registered: May 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
My wife and I dealt with this kind of problem by each registering with a different party, even though we almost always vote the same way. That way, at least one of us gets a say in just about every primary.
I'm the token Republican; since I so registered, I would estimate that only about 30% of the candidates I've voted for have been Republicans.
Posts: 202 | Registered: Nov 2005
| IP: Logged |
quote:I'm not sure what can be done, though, short of revolution.
Could swear I heard something once about fertilizing the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants.
I think that was "watering"; we, apparently, fertilize the tree of liberty with...uh... "fertilizer".
Posts: 11187 | Registered: Sep 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
Well this really isn't something to worry about because the political parties are always in flux. The two truly stable parties we've seen over the last however many years is the exception not the rule. In early history we had such things as the wiggs and the Democratic-republican party. Also the northern democrats and republicans joined together at one point in our history. And the Democratic party started as the southern party right after the revolutionary war and completely did an about face to become the everybody/minority party. We are just seeing the usual ebb and flow.
Personally I hope this type of cross party voting starts to take the bite out of how divided this country has been across party lines over the last 6 or so years.
Posts: 832 | Registered: Jan 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
Democrats run the show here in the bay area. Though the Greens have been known to make a decent showing.
Here in San Jose we spent hundreds of millions on a light rail that no one rides, we have a statue of an aztec god that seems to have been put there just to annoy the christians, we have carpool lanes designed to make the other 3-4 lanes even more congested, our mayor's under inditement.. It's Utopia!
San Francisco just passed a huge tax on businesses though so we should be seeing some of their jobs down here. (Or you might be seeing them in your state if they decide to leave here all together! Are you prepared for an influx of people who have ruined their own state to move in and vote?)
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[Wink]](wink.gif)
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
