New Mexico Mercury

We have elections that are mostly controlled by two major parties and the partisans of each who function to organize policy arguments in our representative democracy.

This process has its critics. Complaints surface here and there in the New Mexico commentariat. Ideas for improvement – suggestions like open primaries – are championed. No doubt there is widespread distrust and misunderstanding about politics, partisanship and elections among the general public.

It is reflexive in some quarters of the media to discover again that ills of society can be traced to the supposed effects of party and partisanship and the conduct of elections. So it is inevitable – and probably healthy – that our democratic electoral rules and systems be poked and prodded to find something that might make it all better.

This season, since the June primary election, we read complaints provoked by the growing number of unaffiliated voters, New Mexico’s closed primaries, and now even the signature requirements for independent candidates to get on the general election ballot. Adjust the rules, some say.

I hold no particular brief for keeping all the election mechanisms exactly as they exist. There are plenty of improvements to discuss, including open primaries.

But some of the arguments around the issues of voting and parties and elections and partisanship need to be chopped down or trimmed back before we can get on with a more reasoned discussion of any changes.

Before I get to the deceit of the Albuquerque Journal editorial of July 17, I want to go over some definition of terms, because it seems some problems of thinking and writing about these issues are tied to an imprecise use of words.

Decline-to-state is the technical and legal term for voters who choose to not affiliate with a party. It was chosen to avoid the confusion with parties who adopt names such as Independent party. Many journalists, unfortunately, choose “independent” as a replacement for the awkward decline-to-state. Unaffiliated is a more exact term, and seems to be a fair description for the decline-to-state voter.

Using the term independent to describe unaffiliated voters advances a propagandistic purpose. It serves to question the legitimacy of political parties by implying that voters choosing to register a party affiliation are somehow not independent persons, and it attaches all the negative connotations of dependency. The truth is that we are all independent voters – even those of us choosing to affiliate by registration with a party.

Adding confusion is the New Mexico election law terminology defining a candidate who is registered decline-to-state. While wisely choosing to not label unaffiliated voters as independents, the election laws’ authors charge ahead and define an unaffiliated candidate as an “independent candidate.” An independent candidate skips a primary process and gets listed on the general election ballot by getting enough signatures of voters on a petition.

Now let’s take the Albuquerque Journal’s July 17 editorial, headlined “Editorial: Legislature should level independents’ playing field.” This editorial in part is just another opportunity to frame yet another shout-out for open primaries.

But I need to credit the Journal editorial writer or copyeditor for at least slowing the use of “independent” in this otherwise pretty awful editorial. The editorial uses “independent” to describe the unaffiliated voter just twice. Otherwise, the writer chooses decline-to-state or DTS when referring to voter registration.

The editorial writer leads off with the statistic that 20% of New Mexico voters – one in five! About 241,000! – decline to affiliate with a party.

These numbers have a particular power with some journalists, and are repeatedly deployed as evidence for whatever particular fix the writer is choosing to favor. The numbers of unaffiliated do not impress me in the same way. The percentage of voters choosing unaffiliated status in New Mexico is tracking national trends and so can be no more worrisome here than the rest of the country. California has 21% of voters now registering unaffiliated.

The editorial writer poses two bulleted questions concerning the unaffiliated voters.

“Does it make for sound public policy to:

• Bar them from the primaries their taxes pay for?

• Require like-minded candidates to gather more signatures than their Democratic and Republican competitors to get on a ballot?”

The taxation without participation argument is silly. There are many government-funded things in which we don’t all get to participate. Making that goofy argument in every instance of taxation without participation could occupy the attention of the entire Albuquerque Journal editorial and news staff for a long, long time.

And if taxation without participation in this instance is really so egregious, you can argue that the legislature should stop funding primaries. Primary elections are currently considered a public good. And citizens cannot be excluded. They must choose, through their free choice of registration, to exclude themselves. Some voters not participating does not inherently diminish benefits to the public.

A more reasonable question is – does it make for sound policy to bar unaffiliated voters from party primaries? It is a question that can most directly be decided by the parties, as Fred Nathan, of Think New Mexico, has asked of the major party chairs, in a letter from April, 2013.

A provision for same-day voter registration would be an excellent legislative remedy to "open" the primaries. A voter could declare themselves affiliated or re-affiliated on election day. I suspect that might be a little too (small-d) democratic for the Albuquerque Journal editorial writers.

The second bullet point posed by the Journal editorial concerns the signature requirements for an independent candidate to get on the general election ballot. This the writer conflates with major party candidates gathering signatures for the primary ballot. The writer is being deliberately deceitful to make the process seem unfair by a false comparison.

Independent candidates are required to get more signatures. They don’t have a primary election. Seems a fair trade-off.

Major party candidates, when seeking signatures to qualify for their primaries, must restrict their petition signatures to registered voters affiliated with their respective parties. And voters signing can only sign one candidate petition for each office.

So in some ways, it should be an easier task for independent candidates to gather signatures. They certainly have a larger pool of potential signers for their petitions. They can have any registered voter in their district sign, as long as that voter has not signed another independent candidate petition for the same office. Legal signers include affiliated voters, even if they had previously signed a primary candidate’s petition. That opens up a much broader group who can sign – including all those growing hordes of unaffiliated voters.

The issue about independent candidate signatures is being raised in all this because of a lawsuit filed by a Gov. Martinez appointee to the Public Education Commission, Tyson Parker. He failed to get the 2,196 signatures that would have put his name on the ballot for the general election. He didn’t want to affiliate and run as a major party candidate. His choice. But he knew full well that if he did not choose to go through a primary, he would need those signatures.

Mr. Parker failed to meet the requirements of the electoral route he consciously chose. He tried, failed, and then decided the rules unfair. So he sued.

The Journal editorial uses a deceitful description of this issue at their second bullet point. Though awkwardly phrased, “Require like-minded candidates to gather more signatures…”, they clearly mean to deceive the reader into thinking that unaffiliated voters are a group that thinks and votes alike, and anyone who does not affiliate with a party is a natural candidate for these folks. You know, to represent their interests. This is a compounded error in thinking. Unaffiliated voters are not just another party of “like-minded.” They do not represent an even vaguely coherent class of voters, such as those affiliated with a party.

Unaffiliated voters in New Mexico are unaffiliated for different and individual reasons. It could be a good number just don’t much want to vote in primary elections, despite the imaginings of their self-appointed champions who have insisted they not be excluded.

Others may simply not want to be identifiable as partisan, but would want to vote in the primaries if those elections were more easily accessible to them.

Some people might just like to think of themselves as above partisan politics, and different from those inferiors who mess about in such nastiness.

But there also might be a more disturbing civics ignorance trending. We see it growing in the increase of younger voters registering unaffiliated. We see it in the casual deceit of this Albuquerque Journal editorial. We see it in the flattering of the non-partisan and the denigration of the partisan.

The purpose of parties is to organize policy debate. Active citizens with reasonably mature understandings of civics usually choose affiliation with parties because it is through political parties and partisanship, and the people we elect, that policies are debated, refined, and implemented.

Denigrating parties and partisanship weakens this vital democratic process. That may well be the intent of the Journal editorial writer.