I spent all of Tuesday (5:00 AM through 9:30 PM) working at my local polling place, checking in voters. Thankfully, I was assigned to the table where Democrats checked in, as it was more pleasant than dealing with Republicans would have been.
A few thoughts.
Primaries are one of those things that the Progressives gave us back in the early twentieth century, and in theory they are a good thing, and probably still are when the office in question is high profile enough. But I’m not so sure they’re a good thing in all cases, particularly the primaries that were held here on Tuesday.
I doubt whether the Democratic turnout exceeded 10% in the district in which I worked, and it is a district in which one would expect a relatively high turnout for regular elections. The Republican turnout was about numerically half of the Democratic turnout. Democrats actually outnumber Republicans in our district now, which is somewhat surprising since it is probably the most affluent district in town, but the numbers are such that the Republican turnout by percentage was less than that of the Democrats.
It was clear to me as we handed people their ballots that at least among the Democratic voters, many had no idea who was on the ballot, much less where any of them stood on the issues. That probably didn’t make much difference on the Democratic side, because in truth, there wasn’t much difference among them, as each would have satisfactorily filled the position for which they were running, and none of them are bat-shit crazy. The endorsed candidates were designated by asterisks next to their name, but I’m not sure whether that made much difference in how people voted, as I’m not sure many people realized that’s what a the asterisk meant. Two voters handed their ballots back after confessing they had no idea how to vote, but I’m sure they were far from the only such folks.
The Republicans in our district are, I believe (without any supporting data) mostly mainline Republicans who have not quite come to terms with the direction their party has taken. Keep in mind that very few of them came out to vote. I’m not sure that those who did appear were all whackjobs, but one woman did see fit to decry the awful fact that a certain criminal genius was subjected to a lawfully obtained search warrant the previous day. I suspect that statewide it was the whackjobs that showed up in the greater numbers on the Republican side, leaving them with Leora Levy (who is bat-shit crazy) as their candidate for US Senate, which in all likelihood will make Blumenthal’s task that much easier. Particularly on the Republican side, it appears that nationwide the party is driven to the ever more extreme right by an energized minority of Fox watching, QAnon believing nutcases.
So, I conclude that low turnout primaries are not terribly democratic, and it might be worthwhile considering requiring a non-endorsed candidate to not only win the primary, but to do so in a primary in which a given percentage of eligible voters turn out. This would probably benefit Republicans more than Democrats long term, at least in the sane states, as their nominees could drift back toward the mythical center and appeal to voters that people like Levy turn off. It wouldn’t be a cure-all, of course, and it’s entirely possible that the Republican Party has been so taken over by the fascists and conspiracists that it cannot be rehabilitated. But, for the sake of democracy, it’s not a bad idea to try.
Post a Comment