Stop the Grange's Disinformation Campaign
Let's get things straight, a primary is a primary and a general is a general.
Primary elections - in THIS country - are elections where parties choose their candidates. Because we have two very large parties, it has been found to be in the public interest to run PARTY primaries with the same apparatus as GENERAL elections. In Washington state, this has apparently caused hopeless confusion, resulting in wasted effort, disinformation and unconstitutional laws.
Look, I am not a member of the Democratic party. I could be. I've been asked to join, even chided - many times - but I'm not. I'm not a member of any party (except the Italian Communist party, but only in spirit because I like their songs). Therefore, I do not expect to vote in any party primaries here in Washington state. I am happy with that because I love the Constitution.
When I lived in New Jersey, I was a registered Democrat for quite a while, and so every Summer I went to the polls and voted in the DEMOCRATIC PARTY primary. I didn't vote in the primaries of parties in which I was not a member. I never shed a tear about that, because I love the Constitution. In a state that was the Crossroads of the Revolution, we had long ago dropped the notion that declaring party affiliation was some sort of insult. Rather, we embraced it, and the underlying Constitutional principle of free association and did so many decades ago, like so many other states. Out here in the Wild West of Washington, before it was tamed by the Constitution, the 9th Circuit, and, presumably, Wyatt Earp, you had Republicans voting in Green Party primaries, Democrats voting in Libertarian primaries - for all I know Italian Communists infiltrated the place. Why the anarchy? Apparently when you opened those voting booths on primary day in Cowboy Wasington, anybody who asked a fella what party he was a-votin' for got a belly full of lead. Such was, it seems, the Code of the West. But now the cowboy days are, sadly, behind us. No longer do the cokpokes come a-ridin' on in from the Palouse with six-guns on their hips, liquored-up, just itchin' to turn Primary day into the Battle at the OK Corral at a single question from a poll worker. That threat to public order gone - those Wild West days behind us - the 9th Circuit has gently asked (three times now) that the people of Washington state follow the Constitution like everybody else in America. But apparenly that cowboy spirit lives on. The progeny of the men and women who tamed the Okanogan and the Cascades still reach for those six-guns as if for long-amputated limbs when they are asked for party affiliation. But let us view this as what it is: a vestigial reflex born of a time long-past. Yet politicians, always keen to stir up trouble and keep myths alive, have encouraged Washingtonians to believe that being made to declare party affiliation is still reason enough to smite each other with cap and ball. This is not so. Gentle Washingtonians, read the Constitution and the decisions proferred by the 9th Circuit. Please realize that we no longer live in that Wild and Golden Age and have not for some time. Political parties all over America select candidates peacefully, every year. People happily pick parties - sometimes even donning a colorful button or cap to declare party affiliation - and there is no gun play. We need no longer placate the cowpokes of old. Parties, with the Constitutional right to poll their members AND ONLY THEIR MEMBERS are going to select candidates. We can either help them make this selection process easily accessible to the great numbers of people who desire to participate, or we can make it solely the province of poorly-funded parties who will inevitably restrict that selection process to insiders and squeaky wheels. In a system with so few parties, and therefore so few candidates, post-primary winnowing processes will be tragic, useless affairs - mere formalities used mainly to excise our small third parties from the democratic process. Yes, we may dream of bigger things. We may dream of a system of many parties. But a post-primary winnowing hardly seems a reasonable path to such a paradise of political choice. No, these post-primary winnowings are security blankets and pacifiers for old-timers who cannot accept that the cowboy days are over and that now the Constitution reigns as supreme over the Palouse as it does over the bustling cities of the East (and we are a better people for it). Old timers who want to go to SOME election and not declare party affiliation are free to go to the general election. But these relics are only to be pitied and, sadly, forgotten. Let us turn our attention instead to the leagues of young Washingtonians who dream of open, accessible PARTY primaries, where all of THE MEMBERS OF A PARTY may participate with ease and convenience, using the apparatus of our general elections. Let us turn to the them, Gentle Washingtonians, and not to the mouldering relics and dead cowboys. Let us turn to the future and not the past.
Stop the Grange's Disinformation Campaign | 40 comments (40 topical)
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