Pew Research Center released a survey last month which was encouragingly called “Beyond Red vs. Blue.” Encouraging, that is, for the growing number of Americans eager to find a way out of the partisanship which has come to dominate public policy making at nearly every level of government.

The study — a 150-page analysis — was quickly digested by reporters eager to get a leg up on the latest political trends just as the Republicans held their first televised presidential debate in South Carolina which, notably, holds both an early primary and an open primary in which independents are allowed to vote.

“Voters More Complex than Red/Blue” wrote ABC political director Amy Walter. “The Misunderstood Independent,” echoed Aaron Blake and Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post.

The fifth study of its kind conducted by Pew since 1987, the survey aims to give a broad overview of the character of electorate and sorts Americans into eight cohesive groups based on values, political beliefs, and party affiliation.

Three of the eight classifications that emerged from this year’s study were dedicated to independent voters — up from 2 classifications in the 2005 survey. More importantly, the presence of independents was evident across all five of the remaining classifications including those meant to define Democratic and Republican voters. In those groups, independents comprised 15 to 34 percent of their total makeup. Independents are everywhere it seems.

Pew acknowledged this in their report stating, “In recent years, the public has become increasingly averse to partisan labels. There has been a sharp rise in the percentage of independents — from 30 percent in 2005 to 37 percent currently.”

The survey also encouragingly pointed out that contrary to much theorizing that independents comprise “the center” of American political life, they remain a diverse lot with strong opinions. “The growing rejection of partisan identification does not imply a trend toward political moderation, however. In fact, the number of people describing their political ideology as moderate has, if anything, been dropping,” wrote Pew, acknowledging that while independents have come to played a central role in the last three national elections, this does not a “center” make.

Pew’s findings amplify our own, discovered not through polling, but through the activity of organizing independents over the course of two decades. Independents are not in the middle between Democrats and Republicans. Rather, they want to move beyond the confines of parties altogether.

Perhaps more so than any other group of American voters, independents are attuned to the fact that partisanship is not a behavioral issue, it is a structural one. Since partisanship is produced by the structure of politics, addressing the issue of partisanship meaningfully means changing the political structure. That’s why reforms like open primaries and nonpartisan elections are so popular among independents.

Read the original article here

The first set of demands made by the people of Egypt after Mubarak stepped aside was that the army suspend the constitution and dissolve parliament. At the same time the punditry here in the U.S. are saying that in order for the Egyptian revolution to bring viable democracy to that country, they need the “institutions” of democracy. But don’t these institutions include a constitution and a parliament?

Significantly, the first institution the pundits call for in Egypt is political parties. But here in America the people are fed up with the role the parties are playing in our democracy.

So what is the relationship between democracy and the “institutions of democracy”? In America a case can be made that the Constitution was adopted to curb the excesses of democracy. The period after the revolution was one of great unrest. In Massachusetts in 1786 a poor farmer, Daniel Shays, led a rebellion against the taxes and other levies imposed on him and those like him to pay off the revolution’s debt to wealthy European interests that had loaned money to support the war against England. In western Pennsylvania several years later, small distillers refused to pay an excise tax levied by the new national government established by the Constitution. Both rebellions were suppressed.

In No. 85 of the Federalist Papers, written by and on behalf of those advocating for the adoption of the Constitution, Alexander Hamilton emphasized the need to restrain “local factions and insurrections,” and prevent the undermining of “the foundations of property and credit.” That the Constitution could not win approval without the addition of a Bill of Rights to protect citizens against the government it established, says much about the nature of the document and the system it put in place.

It was not long after the adoption of the Constitution that the two political parties developed. The Federalists, based in the Northeast and New England represented commercial interests and advocated for a strong national government and a pro-business economic policy, including the formation of a national bank. Alexander Hamilton and John Adams were the founding fathers associated with the Federalist Party. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison founded the Democratic-Republican Party (soon to become the Democratic Party) which represented an alliance of white small farmers and wealthy southern slaveholders.

For the next 200 years these two parties (and, in the case of the Federalists, its successors, first the Whigs and then the Republicans) were the vehicles by which the conflicts that led to the adoption of the Constitution were mediated and organized. Their constituencies varied and the particular issues they championed changed with the country’s unfolding history.

In their role as mediators of political conflict, the parties set the boundaries of permissible dialogue and the limits of movements for social change. During the post civil war period, the Republican Party that had elected Abraham Lincoln who led the country through the Civil War and signed the Emancipation Proclamation initially supported freed slaves in “reconstructing” the South. The period saw the election of many Blacks to public office and significant progress in education and economic development. This provoked a backlash led by the Democratic Party and some of its most unsavory allies, like the Ku Klux Klan. In 1876 the Republicans and Democrats reached a deal where the Democratic Party would withdraw its opposition to the election of Rutherford B. Hayes, a Republican, in a closely contested election, in exchange for pulling back from support for the empowerment of African Americans in the South. After Hayes took office federal troops were withdrawn from the southern states.

In 1896 the Democratic Party co-opted the anti-capitalist populist movement by nominating its most eloquent spokesperson, William Jennings Bryant, as its presidential candidate. Bryant lost then and in two subsequent elections, but both parties cooperated in passing a series of reforms implemented by President Theodore Roosevelt to curb some of the worst excesses of rapidly growing industrial capital through, for example, the passage of the Sherman Anti-trust Act. Similarly, in the 1930’s the Democrats, with Teddy’s cousin, Franklin, in the White House, co-opted the pro-socialist ferment catalyzed by the Great Depression through official support for expanding trade unionism and the introduction of social security. The unions today function more as an interest group and a key part of the Democratic electoral coalition than as a leadership force for progressive change. A similar process occurred during the 1960’s when the various movements for civil rights, women’s rights and gay rights became competing constituencies within the Democratic Party.

The Parties would argue that they were the vehicles for social change. And in a sense they were, although it is more honest to say that they responded to movements for social change by accommodating them within the existing constitutional framework. Socialism would have meant nationalization of industry something the Constitution does not allow as President Truman would later learn when he tried to seize the steel mills to settle a massive strike in 1952.

The parties claim to be the instruments of democratic change is belied by their functioning in an increasingly undemocratic manner. In the early 20th century, widespread outrage over the selection of candidates from alderman to President by party bosses in “smoke filled rooms,” led to the passage of laws requiring candidates to be elected by primary elections open to all party members. A target of the civil rights movement in the mid twentieth century was the refusal by Democratic Parties in the South to allow African Americans to participate. Given the dominance of the Democratic Party in that era in the southern states, exclusion from the Democratic primary meant exclusion for the electoral process altogether. It took a series of Supreme Court decisions and a mass civil rights movement followed by the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to substantially change the situation in the southern states.

In times of social progress, it is easier for the parties to present themselves as vehicles for fulfilling the peoples’ goals and aspirations. In recent years, however, the country has experienced a severe economic recession and political and policy stalemate. And the parties themselves are identified by more and more Americans as an impediment, not a vehicle for solving the pressing problems we face. And some of the institutions of democracy that at one time were reforms, are themselves becoming impediments to breaking the gridlock.

A key example is the primary system. The primaries in both parties have been captured by a small number of hard core party activists and ideologically driven elements. In the Democratic Party, the public service unions dominate; in the Republican Party it is social conservatives. Turnout in some states is as low as 10 percent of party members. Given the growing number of independents, the percentage, measured against the total electorate is significantly lower. In California some 3.5 million voters are not members of a political party. In New York, the number is 2.4 million. In response to this situation, the voters of California recently passed, by referendum, a law that abolished party primaries, replacing them with a first round in which all candidates are on an equal footing and all voters can participate. The top two go on to the general election. In New York and other closed primary states, nonaffiliated voters are barred from the primary where the candidates on the general ballot are chosen. And, like in the pre-civil rights movement south, in areas were one party dominates, the outcome of the primary determines who is elected.

Our elected officials are, therefore, often the most partisan elements in each party and they bring their partisanship into the halls of Congress and state legislatures. There is a growing democracy movement in America that is addressing this political and policy impasse. In doing so, they are challenging some of the institutions of democracy, in particular the parties, and the primary system that 100 years ago was a democratic reform, but now is a barrier to the exercise of democracy.

This movement is led by independents who recognize that the creative and innovative solutions demanded by the current circumstances requires breaking the parties’ hold on the government and the electoral process. As in Egypt, the movement for democracy pushes up against and demands transformation of the “institutions of democracy.”

Read the original article here

“If President Obama wants to rebuild his standing with independent voters, the compromise tax package is a small step, mainly because it shows he’s willing to take on his own party,” said Jackie Salit, president of IndependentVoting.org. “But if he really wants to send a message to independents, he’s going to have to show that he’s willing to take on both parties and their tightfisted control of the political process, something the left liberals who are railing at him now have refused to do. Obama should speak out for some non-partisan reforms that remind the parties that 40% of the country are independents because they don’t like either of them! How about putting an independent on the Federal Election Commission? That will piss off Democrats and Republicans but it will make independents feel respected.”

Read the original article here

Name a problem — poverty, war, out-of-control spending. The political parties offer themselves as the solution to all of the above, and more. We respond by voting for first one party, then the other, then back again. We want to let the world know we are unhappy, but we haven’t yet developed the creative capacity to rearrange the world around us.

This seemingly eternal passivity is the mother’s milk of political partyism. No wonder the Republicans and Democrats and their auxiliaries — the tea parties, the unions, the media — must whip us into a frenzy. Whether we are Foxites, MSNBCists, bloggers or bored stiff, we’re now implored daily to get out to vote. Why? Not because voting develops our capacity to move the country forward. But because we must put one, or the other, or both, political parties in power — even though separately and together, they brought us to this anxious and crummy place.

This is American politics 101. The cure for whatever ails us is . . . more of the same. Public health advocates tell cautionary tales about diabetics who drink soda, people with high cholesterol who eat burgers and fries, and daughters of breast cancer victims who take hormones. But somehow, no one ever informs us that political parties — and the partisanship they spawn — have clogged our national arteries, fried our national brains and compromised the entire body politic.

But Americans are starting to move beyond the parties, even beyond partyism. That’s the dynamic story unfolding on the edges of the midterm battleground. And if that motion is cultivated by truly nonpartisan innovators, the political parties will have a comeuppance sooner than you might think. Contrary to what some analysts argue — that America is ripe for a third party — the direction Americans are really heading is away from parties altogether.

In June, a little-discussed proposition was passed by California voters with a winning margin of 8 percentage points. Proposition 14 abolished party primaries and unleashed an unpredictable group of voters onto the political playing field: 3.4 million independent voters who’ve declined to state a party allegiance. The result? Political parties will no longer control the first round of voting in that state.

Instead, the voters — all voters — will determine which two contenders, out of an unlimited field of variously aligned (and nonaligned) candidates, proceed to a final round. Denounced as a virtual sin against nature (echoes of the divine right of kings?), Prop 14 was excoriatedby all of California’s political parties, major and minor. But the voters, in their post-partisan wisdom, ignored the warnings. They’d simply had enough of party control.

California isn’t alone. In mid-October a federal court judge in Boise, Idaho, heard testimony in the case Republican Party of Idaho vs. Ysursa, a crucial test of the parties vs. the people. Idaho has an open primary system, where any voter can cast a ballot in all primary and general elections — voters simply register in Idaho, they do not affiliate with a political party.
The Republican Party sued Idaho Secretary of State Ben Ysursa to compel the state to close the primaries and institute partisan registration. There has been a great deal of litigation across the country on open primaries, but in Idaho, for the first time, the judge allowed independent voters (represented by my organization, IndependentVoting.org) to intervene in the litigation, bring their own counsel to the table, and argue that closing primaries grants the parties a political supremacy that gravely curtails the participation of nonpartisan voters, now 40 percent of the country.

The decision is expected in January, and the case is being watched by prominent constitutional law and party-rights experts. The implications of the case are potentially historic. It will delineate — even curtail — the power of political parties to exert their will over what should be a fundamentally public, not partisan, process.

On Tuesday, voters in Florida and California will get another bite at the nonpartisan apple. Redistricting-reform ballot initiatives are offering voters the opportunity to rein in the power of the parties when it comes to the all-important task of drawing district lines.

Earlier this year, here in New York — where we have closed primaries and a legislature legendary for its partisanship — there was an effort by the Independence Party of New York City, the government reform group Citizens Union and Mayor Michael Bloomberg to end party primaries in the Big Apple and shift to a nonpartisan election system. But the effort stalled.

Still, the party system in the Empire State is vulnerable. And the underlying trend away from partyism reasonably includes new parties popping up along the way. The Independence Party of New York City, which styles itself as an “anti-party” party, delivered three successive wins to Bloomberg, including a massive exodus of 47 percent of black voters from the Democratic ticket in 2005. On Tuesday, if a sufficient number of voters back the radical African-American City Councilman Charles Barron, his independent bid for governor could result in the creation of the Freedom Party, since 50,000 votes for governor on a party line establishes ballot status. While to date, white voters have shown more party mobility than black voters, we’re now seeing an increase in black voters drawn to ticket-splitting and other forms of defection from the Democratic Party.

These are strange political times. The pundits say this election is a referendum on President Barack Obama, but that doesn’t truly capture the dynamic. More precisely, Tuesday will be a referendum on Obama’s ability to navigate partisan waters. He was elected to change the political game, and he’s found that impossible to do: The parties won’t allow it. Still, the American people, courted, ignored and manipulated by the political parties, are beginning to identify them as the problem.

The parties are so deeply embedded in government and in the structure and design of America’s electoral process that they never have to justify their existence to voters. But at a moment when there is across-the-board dissatisfaction with partisanship, shouldn’t they have to? Shouldn’t we have the opportunity to create alternatives — nonpartisan (rather than bipartisan) governance, campaigns based on healthy debates about new ideas, unorthodox coalitions and an environment that fosters innovation?

Right now the parties stand in the way of all that. That’s why we’re seeing signs that the people want them to stand down. Look for those signs when the returns are in on Tuesday night. They’ll tell you more about where the country is headed than who controls Congress.

Read the original article here

This week I filed an amicus brief in an appeal that seeks relief from discriminatory deadlines imposed on independent candidates. Colorado state representative Kathleen Curry is the plaintiff in the case.

Joining me in filing the amicus was Joelle Riddle, a La Plata county commissioner and founder of Independent Voters for Colorado. Riddle, like Curry, was a former Democrat who disaffiliated to become an independent and attempted to run for public office. Colorado imposes a 17-month waiting period for such candidates. Curry’s suit challenges the constitutionality of this requirement.

The amicus brief states “…the district court approached the issues before it solely from the vantage point of the interests of the Democratic and Republican Parties, and more broadly, the system which they dominate. There is little, if any, recognition of the legitimacy of independent alternatives, nor of the rights of America citizens to participate in the political process as they choose, whether or not that is consistent with the interests of the parties.”

There are a lot of people in this country who are very unhappy with the political parties and their intense partisanship . Some are voters and some are officeholders. But whatever their status, they should have the right to leave a political party and become an independent without being penalized. The parties shouldn’t be allowed to run the political process to suit their own purposes. The bottom line here is democracy, and that’s what Kathleen, Joelle and I are asking the court to see.

Joelle has strong feeling on this issue. She said, “It is time that the court give voice to independent voters and candidates who are asking for something different, outside of the partisan boundaries that often hold hostage the very issues and concerns that matter to us the most. We are asking for the opportunity to offer more choice and a truer democracy to the people of Colorado.”

The amicus brief, along with a motion asking the Court to accept it, was submitted by Harry Kresky, the country’s leading legal advocate for independent voters. Kresky is currently lead counsel for a group of independent voters who intervened in a case pending before Idaho federal court to defending independents’ right to participate in the primaries.

Read the original article here

Independents, now more than forty percent of the American electorate, are challenging the domination of our politics and government by the two major parties. They seek full participation and structural solutions to the hyper-partisanship in Washington and state capitals across the country. A series of recent federal court decisions reflect the progress that is being made to reposition “non-party” players who seek the right to compete effectively in the political process.

A legal milestone in the battle of “the people vs. the parties” was passed in 2008 when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a voting system in the State of Washington that abolished party primaries. The partisan system was replaced with one where all voters participate in a first round open to all candidates, with the top two going on to a general election also open to all voters. Wash. State Grange v. Wash. State Republican Party 552 U.S. 442 (2008). That Supreme Court decision laid the foundation for a next step on the political front. California voters will go to the polls on June 8th in a referendum designed to bring that system to their state and give 3.4 million independents the right to vote in the election that determines which candidates will appear on the November ballot.

Independents are making legal headway in the area of campaign finance as well, in some cases by the courts rejecting some of the Watergate-era constraints on political spending. The attempts to restrain political giving as a means to prevent corruption and the aggregation of electoral power have proven to produce the opposite. Thus, restrictions on non-party players in the electoral arena have been loosened while the existing limits on contribution to and expenditures by party committees (as proxies for parties) have been maintained. While the courts have been strident allies of the two parties and the two party system (Justice Scalia once opined “Representative democracy … is unimaginable without the ability of citizens to band together in promoting among the electorate candidates who espouse their political views. The formation of national political parties was almost concurrent with the formation of the Republic itself,” California Democratic Party v. Jones, 530 U.S. 567, 574 (2000)), some decisions, described below, have weakened the relative position of the parties in the funding of candidates for public office. The beneficiaries, independents, corporations, labor unions are, in traditional terms, strange bedfellows. And, while these developments have brought hand wringing by pro-regulation liberals who support a campaign finance system designed to keep “big money,” out of politics, they create new opportunities to open up the political process and challenge the two-party monopoly.

In Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 130 S. Ct. 876 (2010), decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in early 2010, the Court ruled that the First Amendment bars limits on independent expenditures by corporations and labor unions in support of candidates for federal office. By increasing the leverage of non-party players, the ruling may well loosen the hold of the major parties on the electoral process. The dissenters, in fact, warned against this. 130 S. Ct. 940.

Independents are particularly encouraged by a March 2, 2010 ruling by the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit that gives a significant leg up to those seeking to organize new approaches and new entities to compete with the parties in presidential politics. In Unity08 v. Federal Election Commission, 596 F.3d 861 (2010), the Court ruled that the Federal Election Commission (“FEC”) lacked jurisdiction to restrict Unity’s access to the funding needed. Unity08’s vision was to create a grassroots process to assemble a presidential ticket that drew from across the political spectrum, not a third party, but a “third way” to overcome the intense partisanship of the Beltway. Its hope was to organize a new online nominating process and secure a ballot line in all fifty states for an independent ticket for national office.

The FEC had tried to limit contributions to Unity to $5,000 per person on the grounds that it was a political committee supporting a candidate for federal office. In rejecting the FEC’s position, the Court’s decision drew a sharp distinction between Unity, an organization attempting to build a new vehicle for action in the electoral arena, and the existing parties. The Court implicitly recognized the need for new and independent players to raise large sums of money to offset the enormous advantage which the major parties have through control of the institutional machinery. This control dominates every aspect of the political process, from who sits on regulating bodies like the FEC to how candidates are nominated to how Congress and state legislatures are organized. For all of the outcry about how our government is broken, it is completely obvious that the current stakeholders will not reform a system that is engineered to their advantage. Unless “outsider” forces or forces which operate beyond the boundaries of party politics are empowered, there will be no way to fix a broken government or repair a damaged political process.

On another front, the national parties were quick to try to exploit the Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United for their own purposes. In Republican National Committee v. Federal Election Commission , 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 29163, decided on March 26, 2010 by the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. the Court rejected the Republican Party’s effort to use Citizens United to overturn restrictions on contributions to it that are used to support candidates for public office, otherwise known as “soft money.” The Court noted that the “national party committees and the public officials who control them” were “inextricably intertwined.” (p. 13) In a decision handed down the same day, the Court of Appeals that decided the Unity08 case held that individuals can contribute unlimited amounts of money to non-party organizations making independent expenditures on behalf of candidates. Speechnow.org v. Federal Election Commission, 2010 U.S. App. LEXIS 6254.

Unfortunately, the Obama administration has joined with those who decry these decisions and, in particular, the Citizens United ruling, as opening the door to big money domination of the political process. There are several points to be made here. First, the campaign finance system has neither leveled the electoral playing field nor taken “big” money out of politics. Obama himself opted out of the campaign finance system to raise $700 million because he recognized that his insurgent campaign needed as much money as it could get to challenge, first the Democratic Party, and then the Republican Party, establishments. Second, it has become apparent to millions of Americans, particularly to the 40 percent that self identify as independents, that the problem is not that there is too much money in politics, but that there are not enough mechanisms for the people to exercise the power to reform. Put another way, the parties too often stand in opposition to the interests of the people.

We must measure the corrupting influence of money against the need to raise and spend it to challenge existing two-party control. Every court that has looked at the matter has identified the major point of engagement as that between contributors (individual, corporate or union) and a candidate or the party of which he or she is a member. It is this iron triangle of party, candidate and moneyed interests that makes the American political system so hard to reform. Allowing players, including rich ones, from outside that iron triangle to spend to support political reform (including supporting candidates oriented towards reform) and new electoral initiatives is what independents seek in the campaign finance arena.

Read the original article here

In the wake of the resounding victory of Proposition 14 at the California polls on June 8th, advocates of continued partisan control of our electoral process have begun to marshal their arguments in an attempt to close the breach CA voters opened in the partisan citadel.

Proposition 14 abolished party primaries and replaced them with a system known as “top two.” All candidates will appear on a single ballot in a primary election in which all registered voters can participate and candidates can list party preference. The two highest vote-getters face off in the November general election. A similar reform is now under consideration by a New York City Charter Revision Commission, which has the authority to put it before the City’s voters in the November 2010 or 2011 election.

The pro-party argumentation — laid out in syndicated columns last week authored by George Will and David Broder, along with Errol Louis’ column in the New York Daily News — goes as follows. The political parties, they say, are central to our democracy as vehicles for voter education and mobilization, and the selection of candidates who represent their members’ preferences. Their right to do so is protected by the First Amendment, as is the right of citizens to form parties to advance their common interests. Without parties, we are told, billionaires and unchecked special interest groups will come to dominate our political system.

At the core of this position is a legal and logical sleight of hand that conflates the right of the people to form parties (and other associations like labor unions) to advance common interests with the control of the electoral system by the parties. The two are not the same. One is a right of the people; the other is a right of the parties. And, of course, we now find ourselves in a situation where the right of the people to determine how our political system functions is at odds with the parties and their assertion of the right to control the nominating process. In a democracy, there can be no doubt as to whose interests are more fundamental and worthy of protection.

Further, “top two” does not prevent the parties and their members from associating and working to advance their interests. They can endorse candidates, they can urge citizens to vote for them, they can say which candidates truly represent the party and which express a party as their preference, but are at odds with what the party stands for. What has been taken away is the selection of the candidates who appear on the general election ballot by a system of partisan primaries in which the outcome is determined by core party activists who represent, in most cases, less than 10 percent of the electorate, and from which increasing numbers of Americans who prefer to be nonaligned are excluded.

As for the dire warnings of special interest dominance, one must ask, do not the special interests already dominate our political process? And, are not the parties the vehicle by which lobbyists get their business done? Why not make things more honest and more open by allowing these special interests to compete directly in the electoral arenas along with other players, including the parties?

Also suspect are the warnings about the dominance of our political process by wealthy individuals. Wasn’t it California Democratic Party leader Jesse Unruh who said, “money is the mother’s milk of politics?” And Michael Bloomberg and John Corzine used their wealth to win election to citywide and statewide office in New York and New Jersey under partisan systems. John Paul Stevens, noted in his dissent from the controversial Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 130 S. Ct. 876, 940 (2010), (allowing unlimited spending to support candidates by corporations and labor unions), that a likely consequence was to loosen the hold of the two major parties on the electoral process.

Would it be unduly cynical to say that what the parties and the partisans are really upset about is that under the new Citizens United/top two framework, the money could be spent directly on the candidates and would not have to be funneled through the parties; and that the candidates, once elected, would not be beholden to the parties and dependent on them for re-election? Now, one might think this is a good thing. The voters of California thought it was. Others may disagree. Let’s have an honest dialogue.

Let’s not obscure the fundamental right of Americans to determine through the ballot how they want their political system to function. And let’s not forget that it was the partisan system in recent decades which has brought us three unpopular and unsuccessful wars, a near economic collapse and long term chronic unemployment, an energy non-policy that has just produced an environmental disaster of unprecedented proportions, and a public discourse in Washington, and in Albany and Sacramento, that has more to do with which party scores points than what is good for state and country.

Errol Louis goes so far as to argue that “top two” and other anti-party measures are un-American. George Washington cautioned in his farewell address “against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally… It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but in those of the popular form it is seen in its greatest rankness and is truly their worst enemy.” Ain’t he an American?

Read the original article here

On May 2, 2010 MoveOn.org launched its “most important campaign ever,” an effort to “end the stranglehold that big corporations and lobbyists have on our government.” MoveOn.org seeks nothing less than to “fix our democracy and put We the People back in charge.”

The MoveOn.org “launch,” while joining the growing chorus of those who are speaking out against the way the political process is working, ignores a critical factor that is both cause and effect of public disaffection with politics: the growth of the independent movement.

More than 40 percent of Americans now self-identify as independents. And for 15 years, the independent movement’s progressive wing – IndependentVoting.org — has mobilized independents for structural reforms that give voters as much power as the parties. For independents, it is the parties — who are hardwired to big corporations, big money, and special interests — that control government policy. Both parties use populist rhetoric when it suits them, but the hardwiring persists, no matter the message. If we want to “put people in charge,” we have to break down the institutional control maintained by the parties.

But for MoveOn.org, independents don’t seem to exist. Their strategy has been (and remains) to mobilize the most left leaning elements of the Democratic Party base. This is not, by the way, the strategy that brought Barack Obama to the White House. Independent voters propelled a new majority coalition, a coalition of African Americans, anti-establishment Democrats (including anti-the Democratic Party establishment) and independents. And open primaries and caucuses in the 33 states that permitted independents to vote were the key to Obama’s success in toppling the Democratic Party establishment.

This may not be a coalition that MoveOn.org feels entirely comfortable with, not least because the progressive wing of the independent movement, which is anti-party, feels there is a special problem with the Democratic Party. It rails at the corporations and portrays itself as the party of the people, but clings to partisan and exclusionary notions of democracy and governance. If MoveOn.org is serious about revitalizing our democracy it can go beyond jeremiads against “big money” and “evil corporations,” and join with us to support structural changes that bring our electoral system in line with where the American people are already at. This means giving up any kind of strategic bottom line of protecting the hegemony of the Democratic Party within progressive politics. MoveOn.org’s base is much more independent than its leadership, in this regard.

Right now millions of Americans — some 40 percent of the voting population — self identify as independents. And millions of independents are disenfranchised by not having the right to vote in primary elections where the candidates we choose from in November are selected. For example, in California there are 3.4 million “decline to state” voters who cannot participate in primary elections unless a party specifically invites them in.

On June 8th California voters will go to the polls to vote on Proposition 14. If adopted, Prop. 14 would replace party primaries with a system in which all voters, regardless of party affiliation or non-affiliation, vote in a first round where all candidates appear on one ballot with their party preference listed next to their name, if they wish. The top two vote-getters go on to the general election ballot. This form of open primary makes it possible to build an Obama-style coalition that can win. Think what it would mean for MoveOn.org to urge its followers to vote yes on Prop. 14. We the People would be taking charge by voting to fully enfranchise 3.4 million voters.

In addition to open primaries, other structural changes sought by America’s growing independent plurality are: nonpartisan administration of elections; nonpartisan redistricting; same day voter registration. The solution to the crisis in our democracy can only be more democracy.

The biggest impediment to the advancement of democracy in our country is the two major parties. By blocking efforts at structural change they seek to perpetuate (and in some cases reinforce!) a system in which smaller and smaller numbers of people — the most ideologically committed party activists — determine who we can elect to office and how and whether legislation is considered from Washington to City Hall.

MoveOn.org might feel that arrangement enhances its capacity to shape the outcome of elections, because highly mobilized groups can have outsized impact in a smaller universe. In this regard, MoveOn.org has more in common with the Republican-allied Tea Party movement than they’d like to admit. Each one is tethered to a major party, while attempting to influence its direction. But that strategy, whether employed from the “left” or from the “right,” can intensify partisan battles and drive more and more Americans out of a political system in which they have no power. That does not put the people in charge. It relegates them to the margins.

Therefore, we, the undersigned, invite MoveOn.org to “move in” with the progressive wing of the independent movement. Together we can fix our democracy by backing the structural political reforms which give power to the people, not to the parties.
______________
Jackie Salit is President of IndependentVoting.org, a national association of independents with organization in 40 states.

Harry Kresky is the country’s leading legal advocate for independent voters. He currently represents independent voters in Idaho in federal litigation regarding open primaries.

Jason Olson is the Director of IndependentVoice.org, a California based organization of independents representing the state’s 3.4 million “decline to state” voters.

Read the original article here

I was disappointed to see that my friend and colleague, Ralph Nader, recently spoke out against Proposition 14, the California ballot initiative that proposes to reform the electoral process in America’s most populous state. If passed, Prop 14 would allow all voters, whether affiliated with a party or not, to vote in an all-inclusive first round in which every candidate is listed on the ballot with their party preference next to their name. The top two vote getters go on to the general election which is also open to every voter. Nader believes California voters should reject this reform in order to guarantee third parties a spot on the general election ballot at the expense of millions of independent voters who will be empowered if Prop 14 passes.

In 2004, Ralph faced an organized conspiracy by the Democratic National Committee and the John Kerry presidential campaign to keep his name off the ballot in as many states as possible. Leading Democrats held Nader responsible for Al Gore’s defeat in 2000, and justified their assault on his right to run for President and the right of Americans to vote for him with the need to defeat George Bush by any means necessary, including restricting the franchise. I am proud to have volunteered my efforts to represent Nader in courts in West Virginia and New Mexico, and that in both states his name remained on the ballot, in spite of the Democratic Party onslaught.

Read the original article here

The battle over the wording of CA prop 14 — sometimes called the top two or open primary initiative — likely ended yesterday with a ruling by a California Court of Appeals upholding the lower court’s refusal to alter the language that will appear on the ballot to describe the measure CA voters will vote on June 8. So concluded a week of intrigue in which partisans attempted to derail the initiative through a backdoor legal maneuver.

Prop 14, if passed, would institute a form of open primary where all voters, whether affiliated with a party or not, vote in an all-inclusive first round in which every candidate is listed on the ballot with their party preference next to their name. The top two vote getters will go on to the general election which is also open to every voter.

An important issue posed by the litigation and one likely to play back into the overall fight, is whether or not parties have a “right to be on the general election ballot.” Opponents of Prop 14 tried unsuccessfully to get the court to rule that the ballot summary must state that Prop 14 will eliminate that right. However, there is no such right. This issue was resolved when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the State of Washington’s top two initiative on which Prop 14 is modeled. Wash. State Grange v. Wash. State Republican Party 128 S.Ct. 1184 (2008).

The assertion of such a right by the parties raises a fundamental question about the nature of our democracy. Does it rest on the rights of voters or on the rights of parties? On one level the answer is simple. The Constitution makes no mention of political parties. The Bill of Rights speaks of the “rights of the people,” not of the parties. After all, it is the people who organize the parties, so how could the rights of the parties they organize trump theirs?

In 2000 the parties went to the Supreme Court to prevent the voters of California from instituting another form of open primary. Democratic Party, et al. v. Jones, 530 U.S. 567 (2000). Obviously, they have not given up the fight. With the preliminary legal hurdles passed, the State’s 3.4 million independents can now join with other voters in asserting their right to determine how the elections by which they select their government are organized. Wasn’t it Abraham Lincoln who spoke of “government of the people, by the people, for the people?”

Harry Kresky, a New York City attorney, is counsel to IndependentVoting.org. He currently represents independent voters in a precedent-setting case defending open primaries in Idaho.

Read the original article here