Awtry

I am a resident of Michigan and a registered voter. I moved back to Michigan after being gone for thirty years. and the first thing I did was to register to vote. I am a proud Independent so naturally I asked to register as an Independent. I was informed in Michigan you don’t have to declare or register as a Republican or Democrat, or “other”. I thought, well, this is great!

And in just two weeks here in Michigan, on Tuesday, August 4, the most important election of the year will be held. You say no, that’s not until November. Wrong. By then, 90 percent of the congressional races will already be decided because the candidates we voted for in the primary will be our only choices. The Republicans will win the red districts and the Democrats will win the blue districts. Game over.

Only about 20 percent of the registered voters will vote in two weeks. That means we are letting one in five people choose who we get to vote for in November. That’s sad.

And it gets worse, thanks to the two parties. Did you know they can tell me how to vote, and tell me who I can and cannot vote for in the primary election? This is about as far from democracy a possible, yet the state of Michigan allows this to happen.

Did you know that political parties are not mentioned in our Constitution, and that was by design, as our Founders knew parties would divide us and place the power of the people into the hands of party bosses. (They were right.) But what is mentioned in the Constitution is my right to vote.

For me, here’s what is going to happen on August 4th. When I walk into my primary election voting place, I will be asked a question. “Do you want a Democrat or Republican ballot?” I will say neither, I want an Independent ballot.” They will say they don’t have one. I will say, “I want to vote for a Republican candidate for the House and a Democrat for the Senate.” They will tell me I can’t do that! I say, “Why not?” They say, “Because the two parties make the rules, and they say you have to chose a Republican of Democrat ballot!”

Then I will say, “Who is paying for this statewide election?” They will say, “The State of Michigan, with taxpayer dollars.” And of course I will say, “So, you are telling me I am paying for an election that I can’t vote for the candidates I choose because some political party, which is really nothing more than a social club, says so?”

How can the two parties and the State of Michigan restrict my voting rights by forcing me to choose a ballot for a party I am not a member of?

I am not alone as 10,000 voters a week are changing their status to Independent voters. Right now 47% percent of voters identify as Independents, with only 27 percent each for Democrat and Republicans. And for good reason; the two parties now exist for only one reason; to win elections. Everyone can see the Independent movement is on a rapid rise, everybody that is except the two parties, who remain blinded by political gun smoke and deafened by their violent outbursts at each other.

And Michigan has the nerve to say they have Open Primary Elections? That is a lie. They aren’t open, maybe semi-open at best. There is a huge national push to change our “fixed” elections, Yes, when the two parties stop registered voters from voting as they choose, I call that “fixed.”

In many states, the parties gerrymander districts to give them an advantage. They lock out certain voters from primary elections. They require more signatures for an Independent to get on the ballot than they do for themselves. And they allow unlimited dark money donations from unnamed sources to go into their political PACs.

Over 18 million voters will not be allowed to vote in taxpayer funded party primaries this season simply because the two parties said so. Call it what you want, but I call it rigged when parties can restrict my voter rights.

There are fixes for this injustice. We could have Open Primaries, with every candidate on every ballot. We could have Ranked Choice Voting, where instead of voting for one candidate, you rank them 1, 2, 3, etc., with the top two going to the general election. We could have non-partisan commissions, inste4ad of parties, to map out Congressional Districts. We could ban dark money in elections.

So why can’t we do it? Simple, it would have to be passed by the two parties. Oops, I mean passed by the two foxes guarding the hen house.

The two parties have us right where they want us, so they can harvest us like a bunch of garden vegetables every two, four or six years. They zoom around our states spreading their fertilizer, and hoeing out the weeds (Independent voters) so they can stay in power, and yes, both parties are equally guilty.

This is not the independence we fought for.

The time has come for Independent voters to have equal voting rights in America. A voter shouldn’t have to declare as a Republican or a Democrat to exercise their constitutional right to vote.

The time has come for EVERY candidate’s name to be on EVERY primary ballot so EVERY registered voter can vote the candidate of their choice.

We could call it…

DEMOCRACY!

What say you? Let me know at gregawtry@awtry.com