So you want to have a big party. You’re going to have a lot of cars partially blocking the road. You’re going to have a mob of people wandering around outside talking and eating and drinking. You’re going to have music and noise.
Because you don’t want to have trouble, you invite the neighbors. If they’re at the party, contributing to the congestion, confusion and noise, then they share in the responsibility for the inconvenience. They take ownership of the party.
In an important sense, this is why we have elections. If people are responsible for the government they have, then they’re more likely to accept its decisions, even when government actions are less than desirable, full of confusion and noise.
Yesterday, New Mexico threw a big party, but the overwhelming majority of the state’s residents didn’t attend. They can claim, with varying levels of plausibility, that the candidates who emerged from the Democratic and Republican primaries don’t represent them.
Those who have the most plausible case, an incontrovertible case in fact, are the 239,151 independents. Under state law they are technically people who, when they registered to vote, declined to state a party preference. Independents are so marginalized in New Mexico that we don’t even allow them to call themselves independent, merely those who declined to choose a major party.
Even under those marginalized conditions, 19 percent of registered voters in the state classify themselves as independent. They know that they can’t vote in primary elections. They also know that Republicans and Democrats have ganged up to create as many one-party districts as possible. The result: most real choices are made during primaries not general elections, giving independents no chance at all to cast a meaningful vote.
A lawsuit, the first of its kind in New Mexico, was filed yesterday challenging this system. The suit points out that all residents, not just Democrats and Republicans, pay for primary elections. It also points out that the state constitution guarantees that all New Mexico residents can vote in elections.
It is also relevant that multiple courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, have ruled that primaries are elections that must follow the Constitution. Back during the bad old days of segregation, southern states tried to argue that political parties were like private country clubs and their primary elections were like dances at the club, where only those invited had the right to attend. The courts would have none of it.
The exclusion of independents from the political process is only one of the numerous machiavellian schemes adopted by Democratic and Republican insiders to manipulate and control our political process. Even the data we use is in essence a lie: Unlike officials in most other states, the New Mexico secretary of state uses percentage of registered voters, rather than percent of eligible voters, when she (it has always been a she) publishes turnout figures. Between 15 and 20 percent of citizens 18 or over who are not convicted felons never bother to register and hence are not counted in our turnout figures.
Speaking of the secretary of state, whose most important jobs are to organize elections and police campaigns, why should Democrats and Republicans be allowed to control this job? Why should elections be run by an elected member of a political party rather than by an independent, nonpartisan commission, as in most other countries?
To keep control over who runs in primaries, our major party politicians established the preprimary convention. These meetings of party insiders used to actually choose the party candidates, but when that became legally untenable, they created a bastardized rule that a candidate had to get the support of 20 percent of convention delegates or submit additional petition signatures. No candidate who didn’t get the 20 percent has gone on to win an election, but Attorney General Gary King, who came in fifth at the preprimary convention, could be the guy who finishes off this silly rule.
So that the political parties can keep control of the judiciary, they have required judges to be elected although it is impossible for the average voter to have any idea who is or would be a competent jurist.
To ensure that Republicans and Democrats further control the electoral process, we go through the preposterous rigamarole every 10 years of having members of the two parties design the districts in which they will run for re-election. Other states, notably of late Arizona and California, have created independent electoral commissions to draw boundaries for election districts, while we still have state legislators and local bodies draw their own districts.
We still do not allow felons to vote even after they have fulfilled their obligation to society.
We still do not allow same-day registering and voting.
We still insist on having elections on Tuesday, a work day, rather than on a weekend as most of the rest of the world does.
Although we now allow early and absentee voting, we seem to make it as inconvenient as possible. To cast an absentee ballot, you first have to contact an election office to request an application be mailed to you; fill out, stamp and mail in the application; receive an actual ballot; then fill out, stamp and mail in the ballot.
We still do not require the media to give free time and space to candidates.
We still do not provide public financing for most elected offices.
We still do not provide a level playing field for all candidates regardless of their personal wealth or the wealth of their friends.
And we still wonder why 90 percent of New Mexicans don’t participate in the rite that is the defining symbol and substance of democracy.
(Photto by Daniel Lobo)
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