Don’t coopt the voting rights movement to whine, “independent” voters.

Wherein I express my annoyance with a certain type of holier-than-thou “independent” voter”

The New York primary took place Tuesday and a big story about it, at least on cable news and social media, was how massive numbers of “independent” voters suffered “voter suppression” due to not being able to cast a vote in the partisan primary. The deadline to change one’s party affiliation in New York (as opposed to a new voter registrant, which was last month) was all the way back in October.

I will say, from a purely partisan standpoint, that such an early deadline is a terrible rule as it impedes party building. Most people are paying little attention to the Presidential race a full year out from it, so New York political parties who agreed to the onerous deadline out of concern for voters from one party tampering with another party’s primary elections were missing the forest for the trees. Those kind of shenanigans rarely change outcomes anyway so it’s not a good idea for parties to foreclose their ability to use the Presidential primary as a way to recruit new registrants via conversion.

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Pima County Dem Party welcomes Independent voters

Pima Dems Welcome Independent Voters (press release) Along with women, the poor, the sick, seniors, public employees, union workers, the LGBTQ Community, African-Americans, Latinos, Native Americans and working class families, add independent voters to the list of Americans the Republican Party wants to disenfranchise. An Arizona Capitol Times article today published in the Arizona Daily Star under the headline … Read more