Text 24116, 102 rader
Skriven 2006-10-29 17:54:26 av Alan Hess
Ärende: parties pay for primaries?
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What do you think of this man's ideas?  I don't agree with everything in his
column, but he does seem to have a point WRT to taxpayers funding primaries. 
Assuming there's no Constitutional mandate that primaries be paid for by
taxpayers, should the parties run the primaries?  BTW, in Maryland primaries,
one can only vote for candidates in the party with which you are affiliated,
and, as he says, unaffiliated voters cannot vote in the primaries.

Voting related aside - Due to the governor's suggestion to use absentee ballots
rather than the voting machines (a position later echoed by his opponent, there
may be a problem with getting enough absentee ballots to meet the demand in
some jurisdictions (mine hasn't come yet.)  Diebold provides the absentee
ballots for Maryland, and they didn't expect such a demand (not surprisingly),
but they say they will get enough printed (Maryland has 42 different ballots -
I didn't know we had that many.  I knew each jurisdiction has a unique ballot
due to local races and initiatives, but there aren't 42 jurisdictions here. 
Some ballots are in different languages - I don't know which, other than
Spanish - which I don't think should happen, but, until English is made our
official language, people who don't speak English will get non-English
ballots.)

*******

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal-op.primaries29oct29,0,365428
6.story?coll=bal-pe-opinion

From the Baltimore Sun
Let the parties pay for primaries


By Dave Reich

October 29, 2006

Feeling betrayed by the original party of my choice, I became an "unaffiliated"
voter several years ago, adding my small contribution to the message of "a pox
on both your houses" that many had sent before me.

Because I am not a member of a party, I cannot vote in Maryland's primary
elections. This suits me just fine.

What does not sit well with me is that I - and hundreds of thousands of
Marylanders like me - still have to pay for government-run primary elections.

I would suggest that party primaries be just that: party primaries, which would
be totally financed and run by the political parties. The public at large
should not have to pay for them and should have no say in how they are run. It
should be entirely up to the party how they come up with their candidates to
run in the general election.

Let's say the Democrats want to run their primary on the second Monday in July
from sunup to sundown, requiring no voter ID, holding the vote in homeless
shelters, while Republicans want to run theirs on every Wednesday in April from
6 to 9 a.m., requiring three forms of voter ID, with voting in gun clubs.

Well, why not? It should be nobody else's business, anymore than the Elks
should have a say in how and when the Lions hold their elections. And why
should the Rotary Club have to contribute to either of their processes? The
point is that the integrity of the system by which any party brings its
candidates to the general election need only satisfy its own members, and the
cost and monitoring of that process should rest entirely on their shoulders.

As for the general election, while it must continue to be financed by the
general public at both national and state levels, there are changes needed
there as well.

First, there must be some uniform, universally applied form of voter ID
instituted. The claptrap suggesting that requiring ID somehow overly burdens
the poor and elderly is insulting nonsense designed to accommodate the indolent
and irresponsible. If voting is such a precious right, then keeping track of
one's voter ID card should not be too much to ask.

Second, the myriad and muddled maze of campaign finance laws and rules serves
only to encourage, and thereby ensure, corruption and obfuscation, and should
be abandoned. There need be virtually no restrictions or limitations on
campaign contributions - only full, clear disclosure of their source.

Finally, since not everyone can have a holiday for Election Day, no one should
have one. Government and municipal employees have always had unfair
representation and effect on elections because they, more than any other group,
are usually given the day off. This, of course, would move polling places out
of schools, which should be kept in session. We instead could use church halls,
VFW halls, bingo halls, reception halls and the like.

If, as a practical matter, we must keep voting in schools, then teachers and
administrators should not be given a day off, and because they would still be
paid and not teaching that day, they should be charged with the responsibility
of running the polling places. This would give us a large number of qualified
workers who would be able to understand any method of voting that would be
thrown at them. And because Maryland still has its ridiculous
mandatory-volunteerism requirement for high school graduation, students could
also help in the endeavor and get credit for it.

But first things first: Let's fix the primaries. Making primary elections
totally private affairs of the parties would leave our boards of elections only
one election per cycle to concentrate on - and screw up.

Dave Reich lives in Perry Hall.

Copyright + 2006, The Baltimore Sun | Get Sun home delivery

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