(Undecided on this one, but love the discussion. Part put below the fold. - promoted by Dean Barker)
Taking out all the partisan blather from this UL editorial leaves a very good point, and so little text as to be of fair use:
The city charter forbids the inclusion of partisan labels on election ballots. Specifically, the charter states: "The mayor, aldermen, school committee members, commissioner of welfare, ward clerks, selectmen and moderators shall be elected by nonpartisan ballot."
Tuesday's primary elections demonstrated the fallacy inherent in the proposition that a nonpartisan ballot creates a nonpartisan election. |
Then the bulk of the article is dedicated to waxing poetic about how their favorite Democrats are the ones who are excluded from the General Election ballot. With a great deal of respect for Bobby Stephen, Richard Komi, and fellow hamster Peter Sullivan, let's skip that part.
Gatsas advocates opening the city charter for revision. If he succeeds, the first thing that must be changed is Article 5.01, the prohibition of partisan ballots. The city's elections are partisan. That fact should be reflected on the ballot. The absurd prohibition of party labels serves only to deny information (party labels) to average voters who are not party activists.
I agree. The elections are partisan, they just don't offer voters the convenience of seeing it on the ballot.
Furthermore, jungle primaries involve anti-democratic math. This oversimplified example demonstrates a very real problem: say in Fakecity, NH, 60% of voters always vote for the Yellow Party and the other 40% of voters always vote for the Purple Party. Every voter would rather any candidate of their party to win than any candidate of the other party. Now let's say there are four candidates of the Yellow Party running for Mayor of Fakecity, and two candidates of the Purple Party. Say the vote within each party in the jungle primary is equally split. Each Yellow Party candidate gets 15% of the vote, while each Purple Party candidate gets 20% of the vote. In this scenario, only the two Purple Party candidates advance to the General Election, even though a solid majority would rather have any of the four Yellow Party candidates.
Obviously, in the real world it's more complicated and there are independent voters, but the fact is that the sheer breakdown and number of candidates in a Jungle Primary can skew the results and ensure that the end result is not what the majority of voters want.
Non-partisan municipal elections and non-partisan jungle primaries sound good in theory, but in practice, both are bad for Manchester, and should end. |
