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A Bad Idea that Sounds Good
Submitted by Marc Stier on Tue, 07/10/2007 - 4:53pm.
A bill changing the 2008 Pennsylvania primary from April to February just passed the House of Representatives and is on its way to the Senate.
This sounds like a good idea. We Pennsylvanians have been pretty much shut out of presidential primary politics for a long time since the major party nominees are usually chosen by the time our primary rolls around in April.
All other things being equal, I’d like to have a voice in choosing the Democratic nominee for President. And it might be fun to take part in a presidential primary. Maybe I could even get a job doing so.
But all other things are not equal.
Moving the primary from April to February will just about insure that no state representatives in Philadelphia are seriously challenged in the primary. It is hard enough to run against an incumbent when voters and campaign contributors have a little bit of respite from the November general election until primary election activities begin in January to April to do so. If the primary is moved to February, it will be almost impossible for challengers to raise the money and make the connections they need to take on incumbents. And it is much more difficult to do door to door campaigning in December and January, when the days are so short, than in March and April (April is actually bad enough. I still think that if the primary were held in May rather than April in 2006, I would have had time to knock on enough doors to defeat Rosita Youngblood.)
You might wonder whether the chance to influence a presidential primary isn’t worth giving up on already difficult challenges to our state representatives.
The answer, for a few reasons, is no.
First, we still might not play much of a role in a Presidential primary politics even if the primary is moved to February 12th. So many other states are going to move their primaries to that date that our role is not likely to be all that important. And, given how much money candidates are going to need to run media campaigns here and elsewhere, there simply is not going to be much left for any other kind of campaign. We might see a presidential candidate or two in the flesh in the week before the primary. But, most likely, we will have to go to the airport to do so.
Second, given how much the primary season is front-loaded, this might actually be the year in which no candidate is able to lock up enough delegates early in the process. So, leaving the primary to April might actually give us more influence than usual in presidential politics.
Third, the state legislature is really important to us. It has a dramatic effect on life in this city and state. Of course, the presidency is even more important than the General Assembly. But, even if we move the primary, our influence on voters and activists in the presidential primary process is likely to be quite small. Our influence in state legislative elections can be much greater. And those elections are critical to building a progressive movement because State Representatives especially run in small districts. This makes it is possible to defeat incumbents without raising an extraordinary amount of money. (That, by the way, is a main reason we should not decrease the number of members of the House of Representatives.)
Fourth, a lot of our Representatives deserve a challenge or more. Too many of them do too little. And too many of them vote the wrong way on many issues, as we have seen on this blog recently.
And, finally, we should not move the primary because this is another example of our politicians acting in a self-serving way. The House of Representatives voted to change the primary date mostly because it is another in a long line of incumbent protection bills, one that helps protect themselves.
It seems as if we actually might have two primaries next year since, if my informant is correct, the bill that just passed the House creates a second election for the purpose of voting on referenda such as charter changes in Philadelphia and school budgets in those parts of the state where they have to be adopted by voters. If that is the case, then sure lets change the presidential primary date. But let’s leave the legislative primaries to the spring where they belong.
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No Vote Is More Important Than One For A Presidential Nomination
No vote is more important than a vote for a Presidential nomination. The issue is not whether any individual vote is decisive. The issue is whether people have a right to participate. People in New York, New Jersey, and Delaware all have a right to meaningfully participate in the Democratic and Republican primaries for President, but the people of Pennsylvania currently do not.
The last time Pennsylvania voters in the aggregate made a difference in a Presidential nomination was in 1976, when Pennsylvania was the ninth state to hold a primary. That year, Jimmy Carter decisively defeated Hubert Humphrey and Scoop Jackson for the Democratic Presidential nomination in Pennsylvania, and virtually ended their candidacies for President, as each of them had considered Pennsylvania a "must" state in any successful candidacy.
In 2008, at best, Pennsylvania will be the 43rd state to vote for President. While nothing is absolutely impossible, it is highly unlikely that there will be a meaningful choice available to the voters at that time. Candidates who win gain supporters and contributors and media coverage, while candidates who lose see their support, finances, and media coverage erode.
I first learned this in the 1976 campaign when I was supporting former Senator Fred Harris--now a leading political scientist teaching and writing on efforts to reduce poverty--for President. Attending a campaign meeting of Harris supporters with a key Harris staff member, I heard a complaint that Harris was only seeking resources from Pennsylvania for the early primary states, but was making no plans for the Pennsylvania primary.
"If Harris does not do well in the early states," the staff member responded with great prophetic wisdom, "there will be no Pennsylvania primary for him."
I have personal experience in this area as Howard Dean's only 2004 delegate candidate to win in the mid-Atlantic states. (One of the the highlights of winning was that I got to have a leisurely conversation on the convention floor with Fred Harris, then a delegate from New Mexico.) By the time the Pennsylvania primary rolled around, Dean was eliminated from the race, and wisely planning his next moves. He did not spend a single minute campaigning in Pennsylvania, nor did he spend a single dollar. No Dean literature was distributed, and there were no Dean campaign workers at the polls or canvassing voters.
People basically had a choice of either ratifying the sure Democratic nominee or not. That I was elected delegate was a tribute to the outreach of the Dean campaign before his withdrawal from the race. My election was a minor national news story because it was an example of how a group of voters were so impressed with Dean that they were backing him long after he had been eliminated from the race. That any significant number of people would treat an election that was in fact a mere empty formality as a real choice struck journalists as incredibly odd, something like Japanese soldiers hiding out long after World War II had ended, and thus worth covering.
The election date change bill that was passed by the House with the vast majority of House Democrats supporting it and the vast majority of House Republicans opposing it sets the primary date at February 12. A better date would be February 5, the date at least 20 states will be voting after at least five states have previously voted. Such an amendment was prepared, but was withdrawn when the sponsor was convinced it would lose.
The bill passed by the House moves the entire primary election to February 12. It would be fine with me if the state would appropriate $18 million of the remaining $300 million unappropriated surplus for the costs of having a separate Presidential primary and a separate primary for Pennsylvania offices. I and other legislators have won many primaries already in April and May of previous years, and we have no problem with another April or May primary. The $18 million cost of a second primary was the major stumbling block for dual primaries in this era of major right-wing influence.
I would hope the Senate would promptly consider the legislation--with amendments or without--so that the roughly 80% to 90% of Pennsylvania voters registered in a political party could participate in choosing our next President. Should the Senate amend the bill by either moving up the date or separating the Presidential primary from the remaining primaries, I believe the House will quickly concur in such a change.
Top Down or Bottom Up?
Although Rep. Cohen's title was "No Vote Is More Important Than One For A Presidential Nomination," he provided no reasoning within the text to back up that statement. I would argue that no vote is more important than a vote for a local official and that presidential politics are the least important of all.
Marc Steir delineated a lot of good reasons why moving the PA primary is a bad idea. Rep. Cohen only delineated why moving the primary could be important to HIM.
Let me add one more thought. The political parties can nominate folks whenever they like. They do not need the state legislature to give them permission. However, as long as the political parties - which are private organizations, after all - are relying on tax dollars - including dollars collected from non-affiliated folks - to hold their private nominating contests, they will continue to be beholden to the state legislature.
Bottom line: Publicly funded primaries have no constitutional basis and mostly benefit the Incumbent Protection & Enhancement Plan. Sacrificing local and state races for the purpose of "being relevant" to presidential politics is shortsighted.
Pennsylvania Has Been Having Primaries Since the Early 1900's
Russ Diamond, best known for his crusade against legislative payraises, his attempted 2006 Libertarian Party candidacy for Governor, and his regular status as a poster on the archconservative website Grassrootspa (he recently called legislative backers of single payer health insurance "Commies" on that site), is simply unfamiliar with Pennsylvania law in this case.
Pennsylvania has been holding and regulating primary elections since 1904. Because it is impractical for small parties like the Libertarians to hold primaries due to the small number of registered voters they have, federal courts have exempted them from mandatory participation in the primary election process if they get enough votes to qualify for it. They can, however, voluntary choose to participate if they wish to when they get enough votes to be eligible.
But for parties with millions of registered voters like the Democrats and the Republicans, having primary elections is an important procedural safeguard because it guarantees responsiveness to individual voters and not just to party leaders. Great progressive leaders like Hiram Johnson of California and Robert LaFollette of Wisconsin were the initiators of efforts to hold primary elections, and fortunately Pennsylvania followed with relative promptness.
The Pennsylvania legislature has long determined when primary elections will be held, and paid for the administrative costs of having primaries. The rule has been the third week in May for three years out of four, and, to enhance our influence in the Presidential primaries, the fourth week of April in Presidential nomination years.
But the Presidential primary process has now been expedited to an extreme degree. There will be at least five primaries or caucuses before February 5, 20 on February 5, and 7 on February 12. Pennsylvania will be--at the very best--the 43rd state to vote for President. It is highly unlikely that there will be a meaningful choice at that time. Pennsylvania voters will, in all likelihood, be denied a meaningful for President unless the Senate passes the House Bill, either with amendments or without.
Two amendments that make sense would be to move the primary date to February 5, and to spend $18 million of the state's remaining $300 million surplus on a stand-alone Presidential primary to leave the regular primaries unchanged. Having two primaries would erase the concerns about frontloading the legislative primaries and would also erase the concerns regarding the school district spending questions in those school district that have to hold referenda to justify higher spending. The only thing stopping dual primaries is concern about the $18 million cost.
Regardless of the details finally arrived at, it is vital that Pennsylvanians have a right to vote for President. Pennsylvanians are not a protected class under the equal protection clause of the federal constitution (written by Pennsylvanian Thaddeus Stevens), but we should not be sitting idly by if the state senate ignores our vital interests in voting for Presidential nominees.
The right to vote a fundamental right under the U.S. Constitution, and Pennsylvanians should not be relegated to casting a vote for nominees for President that is bound to be a mere meaningless footnote in the history of our times.
You still have not responded
You still have not responded to the substance, regardless of Russ's political leanings.
I am working to elect Larry Farnese to the General Assembly. Unless otherwise expressly stated, this and every comment or blog I post on YPP and any action I take hereon is solely attributable to me and not Farnese or Friends of Farnese
I Have Responded
In brief, the most important thing is to have the Presidential primary at a time when the votes are relevant to the decision as to whom the nominee will be. I am willing to support dual primaries if the Senate amends the bill to require them, but the obstacle is the $18 million cost of them. I think the cost is worth it, but a majority of the House did not at the time of House passage.
I beg to differ
You keep saying the most important thing is to give Pennsylvanians a meaningful vote in the presidential selection process.
That is important. But I don't think it is most important, for the reasons I gave before.
Predictions are hard, especially about the future. It may be that a primary in late April will be irrelevant. But, for reasons I gave, that is not at all clear.
And one way or another, voters and activists in Pennsylvania are not going to have much impact on the presidential nominees of either party. If there are ten primaries on February 12, the impact of our vote will be very small.
On the other hand in an state representative election in which a total of 7 or 8 thousand people vote, the impact of one activist and / or voter can be much greater. That's very important for many of us.
I don't know of any political or moral algorithm to determine which is of greater importance.
But let's just say that when the sponors of the bill and the chair of the committee which sent the bill on to the full house--Babette Josephs--will personally benefit from it, I'm not convinced that any serious consideration of the pros and cons determined the outcome.
My Father Risked His Life In Missippi For Voting Rights
In 1964, my father and other dedicated lawyers risked their lives in Missippi to protect the rights of blacks to vote there by documenting how they were being discriminated against. Their efforts were helpful in Congressional passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the decisions of Democratic National Conventions not to accept delegations from states where blacks were discriminated against in voting.
He and his colleagues did not do so because they thought any imminent election would be determined by blacks having the right to vote. Their strategic goals were long range. They worked because they deeply believed that the right to vote was a fundamental right of being an American.
The Democrats did far better in the South in 1964 without many blacks voting than they did in many subsequent elections with many, many blacks voting. That does not mean that giving Southern blacks voting rights was a mistake.
Lyndon Johnson's private statement that civil rights would hurt the Southern Democratic Party certainly proved accurate. I never heard my father, his law partner Morton Jacobs, who accompanied him to Mississippi, or any of the people they worked with say their goal in working for voting rights was to help the Democrats win more elections. They never expressed regrets that they did the wrong thing as Republicans took over many Southern states.
Cynicism does not always lead to accuracy. People's motives are most often what they say they are. The statement that the purpose my minimum wage bill was to help the Democrats in the 2006 elections was not true; its purpose was to raise the minimum wage and raise standards of living of many people.
Similarly, the purpose of the election bill to give Pennsylvanians a meaningful vote for President is to give Pennsylvanians a meaningful vote for President. Many of its supporters, including myself and Rep. Josephs, have long been active in Presidential primary campaigns and we know from experience how important the right to cast a meaningful vote is to many, many thousands of Pennsylvanians.
Deflections and Little Else
The efforts of Rep. Cohen's father and his contempories are commendable and were absolutely the right thing to do, but he is still avoiding the main crux of the issue at hand, which would be why relevance in a presidential primary trumps local and state races.
He did offer up a nice attempt at painting me in a certain light, although some of his salvos are flat out wrong and the bulk of the rest are simply inflammatory. I will probably vehemently disagree with most posters to this blog on policy, however I believe that we here in Pennsylvania cannot hold those discussions at this time because of the lack of integrity and fairness in our electoral and legislative systems.
Since 2005, Pennsylvanians have put their partisanship aside in an attempt to re-establish fairness and equity in those systems. Through that experience we have learned that highlighting our differences is the old way of doing business, so I will not drag out various "facts" about Rep. Cohen which are not pertinent to the discussion at hand.
So please, Rep. Cohen, make your case for trumping local races with presidential politics. Tell us why that single vote is more important than creating the greatest possible opportunity for meaningful competition in the local and state races which have a significantly larger impact on our everyday lives.
No Date Stops People From Running for the Legislature
Russ, no date stops people from running for the legislature. In fact, you are actively recruiting people to run for the legislature right now. You have been actively recruiting people to run for the legislature since July, 2005. You have repeatedly urged that all incumbent legislators be defeated.
That is a clear message that does not take a lot of money or a lot of time to get out, and it is far from certain that it is in your political interest to have an extended campaign on that message. In 2005, you urged your candidates not to announce too early so that the incumbents would not have time to counter them; you then had a press conference at which many of them surfaced for the first time. At least two of your candidates in what had been Republican districts defeated long-term Republican incumbents in the primaries without getting much scrutiny and then, under the extended scrutiny of a general election campaign, lost to a Democrat.
While no date stops people from running for the legislature, a late Presidential primary date stops many candidates from filing in Pennsylvania because they have already withdrawn from the race, and stops others from campaigning here because their withdrawal occurred after they filed. While nothing is absolutely impossible, it is unlikely in the extreme that Pennsylvania as the 43rd state to vote will have any influence whatsoever in the choice of Presidential nominees. The last time Pennsylvania had influence--the 1976 Presidential primary--we had the 9th primary election. The frontloading since then has great, and we have fallen far behind by standing still while others have forged ahead.
We have a virtually certain injury to people's right to have an effective choice for President in an open seat election versus a highly theoretical injury to people's right to have an effective choice against incumbents.
So far, I am unaware of any primary challengers to any incumbent legislators except Babette Josephs. Are you aware of any? Why don't you encourage them--if they exist-- to announce now so they will have plenty of time to campaign whenever the primary is held as her challengers are doing? Or is your strategy again to have them announce a short time before the beginning of the circulation of nominating petitions? If that is your strategy, then it is your recommendation--if followed by your candidates--that limits their campaign time. They can get more campaign time if you simply urge them to start campaigning earlier.
We Are Not Talking About Your Father
who, as you well know, is one of my heroes.
Nor am I talking about your critical work in favor of raising the minimum wage, which I supported.
But if you are going to say that nothing you and others in the state legislature never take any action that serves your own political or financial interest, then the only one you have any chance of convincing is yourself.
Indeed, you wouldn't be a good politician if you were never concerned about your own political career. Politicians can't get much done without gaining political power.
The ethical ideal for a politician is not to be willing to sacrifice his or her political career for any cause but to find the right balance between seeking power and doing good.
And that, by the way, is one of the many things your father taught us.
Having said all that, I do want to step back a bit from what I said in my post because I didn't really say what I meant to say. I don't think you are supporting a change in the primary date to serve your own political interests. You are in about as safe a seat as I could imagine. But I do suspect that it never occurred to you that adding to the advantage of incumbents is a downside of changing the primary date, just as you often don't see any point to a variety of political reforms that would make our politics more open, transparent and competitive. It somehow never occurs to you that a defender of social justice should be working to make the political system more responsive to people without power.
Making the System Respond to All Has Been My Life
Making the system respond to people without power has been my life. My seat is a safe seat because of the decades of hard and effective work I have done for my constituents. The last sentence of your above post shows a complete lack of knowledge about my record, or a complete desire to lie about my record. You should delete it. The second to last sentence should be modified to say "political reforms that proponents claim would make our politics more open, transparent, and competitive;" I simply disagree with the proponents, who are stating opinions and not universally accepted truths.
My legislative agenda has been about solving the problems of the people who cannot afford a lobbyist, who do not make campaign contributions, who are not the focus of anyone powerful's attention because they have no institutionalized power. No gubernatorial candidate in the history of Pennsylvania has run on the pledge of raising the minimum wage; no gubernatorial candidate in the history of Pennsylvania has run on the pledge of repealing the welfare lien on homes; no gubernatorial candidate in the history of Pennsylvania has run on the pledge of establishing legislative district offices, and I was a major leader of all these successful efforts to help ordinary people with major personal problems caused in part by institutionalized indifference.
My legislative concern for the powerless includes political minorities. Only once in his six and a half years as Governor did Tom Ridge veto a Republican bill. That was a bill that I passionately denounced; it raised the signature requirements for third party candidates far beyond their capacity to meet them. I was the only legislator in the House or Senate to speak against that bill. (We have found an area of agreement, Russ!) That bill represented a real injury to politically powerless people and I opposed it while disagreeing strongly with all or virtually all of the beneficiaries of my opposition. (Our area of agreement, as you know, is somewhat limited, Russ!)
In my first full term in the legislature, I pushed successfully to establish mail registration, which immediately led to a massive registration increase in Philadelphia. Years later, after experience in registration drives, I initiated and pushed successfully to establish a voter registration card that could be used statewide to make registration drives easier and to stop local political machine interference with them.
In my second full term in the legislature, I co-authored the election code reform plan providing for pre-election disclosure of campaign finances, fines for candidates who do not file on time, and the elimination of cash contributions over $50 a person per reporting period. John Taglianetti's recent book about Frank Rizzo--Shaking Hands Wtih The Devil-- shows in unprecedented detail how important the elimination of major cash contriubtions was.
I invoked my father's courage in risking his life for voting rights in Mississippi because it made a deep impression on me, that influences me today, as a 15 year old boy, and because it was a conscious articulated risk on his part. He told me and my mother that we might never see him again. He said he would take all possible safety precautions, but they might not be enough. He knew he was going into the heart of hatred less than a year after JFK was killed in Dallas (it is now clear that racial animus was not a factor in JFK's assassination, but it was not clear at that time) and it was a very demonstrable commitment on his part to the importance of expanded voting rights. Voting rights activists in Mississippi (Goodman, Chaney, Schwerner, others) were killed that year, although none of them were lawyers.
As I told Russ--please correct me if my assumption is wrong that his presence here indicates that you and he are working together now--the dangers to the right to challenge incumbents is highly theoretical. There is absolutely no record that incumbents are less vulnerable in April primaries than in May primaries, and it is highly theoretical that incumbents would be more beatable in April than in February after two steady years of bashing in the media by Russ and his friends.
Two years ago, Russ urged his recruits not to announce their candidacies until shortly before the start of circulation of nominating petitions, so that the incumbents they were challenging would be caught unaware. Russ then believed that a shorter campaign period benefitted the challengers. Indeed, two of his challengers who defeated Republican incumbents in low-scrutiny primaries were themselves defeated by longshot Democrats in high-scrutiny general elections. Challengers can get more campaign time if they announce earlier than Russ's 2006 strategy called for, regardless of what happens to the primary election date.
Other than in Babette Joseph's district, where Farnese has been campaigning steadily since 2005 and Benaszek has been campaigning steadily since 2006 and Josephs has been a fixture as a legislative candidate since 1981, I am unaware of anyone challenging an incumbent. I doubt the primary date will make much of a difference in Joseph's district other than there will be a higher turnout if there is a real Presidential election. Is it your theory that defeating incumbents depends on a low turnout? Are you working to defeat Josephs? Are you recruiting legislative challengers generally?
If so, what stops anyone who has agreed to run against any incumbent from joining Farnese and Benaszek and campaigning now?
Selective Reporting
Although you STILL have not really addressed the crux of this issue (why participation in the least important political race should drive the timeline for all other races), you have brought up two points which need clarified.
Of course we encouraged our candidates to hold off on announcing - the element of surprise worked in our favor. It had little to do with shortening campaigns, although I would agree that longer campaigns favor candidates with lots of money or other tools of influence such as incumbency. That holding off was the correct strategy was evidenced by how many legislative staffers crowded in to furiously take notes at our candidate debutante press conference in the Captol rotunda.
I believe the two races you keep referring to (and correct me if I'm wrong) were in the 125th and 130th districts. What you fail to mention is that not only did the Republican machines (both in-district and the HRCC) in those races fail to support those two Republican candidates in the general election, they teamed up with the opposition to defeat them. In hindsight, I do not believe Republicans will make that particular mistake again, as it cost them the majority. (Of course, this belief does not account for the uncanny ability of some incumbents to put their own self-interest before the greater interest of their constituents, their party, or the Commonwealth as a whole.)
So to sum up, while you'd like this audience to believe that shortening the campaigns was responsible for those two losses, it was actually the undue influence of the various machines that did them in - and those machines are akin to an eternal feedback loop fueled by incumbency.
Russ Diamond
I don't really want to get involved in the ongoing battle of Mark Cohen vs. everyone else, but I want to make sure that everyone knows who Russ Diamond is and what his politics are. Mr. Diamond has been an outspoken conservative activist for a long time. He emerged as a leader during the anti-pay raise movement and has come out against unions, mass transit funding, raising the minimum wage, gun control, and pretty much every other progressive issue.
There are a lot of people who I respect, like Marc, Dan, and Gaetano, who disagree with Mark’s position on a variety of issues. Russ Diamond isn’t one of them and progressives should be wary of his contributions to this site.
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Check out my blog!
Thank You, Ben
I have no qualms about the fact that I will disagree with you and most other folks on this blog regarding policy. And since you hail from Philadelphia - and hence, were largely indifferent (through no fault of your own - it's just the way things panned out) to the progress the rest of Pennsylvania has made in restoring honor, dignity and integrity to state government - I'll overlook your attempt to paint me into any particular corner.
And while you are absolutely correct that I lean fairly conservative, I have worked diligently and honestly with folks on both sides of the spectrum to get to the point where we can all air our political leanings on a level playing field. Do you realize that the majority of reform candidates that our group supported, and were eventually elected, were Democrats? (You have no idea how much heat I've taken from the right side of the non-reform political spectrum for that.) It just so happens that those Democrats were NOT from Philadelphia, and that's why I'm here - because I have witnessed a focus on Harrisburg of late by some activists in Philly who are doing some very nice work.
I absolutely look forward to the day when honest political debate can occur in the halls of our Capitol. But today is not that day, Ben. We have much work to do in this area, and Philadelphia is the key to accomplishing those goals.
If I start spewing right-wing ideology on this blog, feel free to counter and parry at will, just as I will when you come to our house and attempt to infiltrate. But I'm not here to change your mind on policy, I'm here to get Philadelphia involved in the reform movement, which is neither right nor left. In fact, it may surprise you to learn that I am fully on board with Philly's 'home rule' position, except on issues which go against the plain language of our Constitution. And even on constitutional issues, I fully support your right to seek change there. I may end up opposing your efforts, but I fully support your right to try.
And by the way, a magical thing has happened through the reform movement: Because I worked hand in hand with good folks who believe differently than I do on policy issues, I have also found that when we do actually touch on those differences, we are now able to do it in a more cooperative and dignified manner than ever before.
Sooooooo, even though you and I have some very deep differences on policy, Ben, I would welcome you with open arms to the reform train. There is only one caveat: we reformers have realized that leaving our partisan baggage and party labels back at the station is the only way this train will succesfully arrive at the end of line. When that happens, we'll send for our personal effects and take it from there.
Cheers, and thank you for the great opportunity to possibly open the eyes of others!
To add to Marc Steir's post,
To add to Marc Steir's post, it hurts challengers especially in the money category because it is following the major Philly elections, so besides a smaller window to raise money, the pocket books are tighter as well. Challengers will be fighting for dollars that may well have been spent in the general election as well as fighting the Christmas buying season.
I am tempted by the idea of Cohen's dual primary in presidential years. We get the increased influence on presidential primary and still keep the integrity of the local races.
As a political aside, it seems like you are making the voting on it a party issue as well. Why do you think GOP is against moving PA up and the Dems for it? I do not understand what ideological reasons for such a split would be.
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"yes adam gave some informative comments but he also seems to sprinkle a little adam dust on it." - merkin
Democrats More Interested in Voting Rights Issues
The Democrats have traditionally been more interested in expanded voting rights issues since the New Deal era. The abolition of the white primary, the abolition of the poll tax, the abolition of literacy tests, the abolition of property ownership requirements, the establishment of registration by mail, the bans on voter intimidation, the expansion of voting by mail, handicapped accessible polling places, reducing the voting age to 18, allowing soldiers on duty to vote, allowing prisoners held for lack of bail money to vote, election day registration, the establishment of a voter verified paper trail for ballots cast, the giving of voting rights to the District of Columbia and American territories have all been Democratic inititiatives.
Republican initiatives have tended to move in the opposition direction through expanded identification requirements, fewer polling places, reducing voting rights for ex-felons, and nitpicking regulations such as eliminating votes of voters who signed in a color ink other that blue or black. (I assure you that I am not making this up.)
Within the universe of Presidential elections, the Democrats have been the party of pledged delegates who have a legal obligation to vote for a candidate until the candidate releases them, while the Republicans have been the party of unpledged delegates who are no obligation to follow the will of the voters. Elected as a Dean delegate, I was only able to vote for Kerry for President under Democratic Party rules because Dean released his delegates a couple of days before the convention voted.
At the public hearing chaired by State Representative Babette Josephs on this legislation, Republican State Chair Robert Gleason noted that Republican delegates could vote for whomever they wanted, so it didn't matter much whether the voters had a choice and said that he saw no problem in voters not having much of a choice or any choice because voters get to choose in the general election.
In short, it is not partisan boasting to say that expanded voting rights are a core Democratic principle and are not a core Republican principle.
Thank
Thank you.
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"yes adam gave some informative comments but he also seems to sprinkle a little adam dust on it." - merkin