Should unaffiliated voters be part of a Colorado presidential primary?
“Colo. rethinks primary,” April 21 news story.
A presidential primary election would ensure that each registered Republican and Democrat could exercise his or her right to vote. However, since unaffiliated voters are not registered with either party, they should not be allowed to vote in a presidential primary election because it would (could) skew the results. Republicans should elect whom they want and Democrats should select their candidate. The results in each party should be proportional. No winner-take-all. A primary election is for the party. A national presidential election is for the country, where you can vote for whomever you want.
BBB The proposed Colorado primary system reforms are insufficient to grant voters real choice. Requiring unaffiliated voters to choose one party’s primary just forces them into the party system. Far better would be having open primaries for all national and districtbased elections. Let candidates from whatever party, or no party, who gather enough signatures get on same ballot. Then let all the voters, affiliated or not, vote by preference, indicating their first, second, third, etc. choices. Then when votes are counted, candidates with the fewest votes are dropped, but a voter’s lower preferences still get counted toward selecting the final two candidates to run in the November election. It’s called “instant runoff voting.” This allows non-partisan candidates to run, promotes parties picking centrist rather than extremist candidates, and gives voters an opportunity to support their less popular choices without losing their voice in selecting among the more popular ones. “Ensure parity for the unaffiliated,” April 22 editorial.
Making taxpayer-funded primaries accessible to all voters is a goal we share with the sponsors of a bill to create a Colorado presidential primary. However, this bill doesn’t do that. Requiring extra steps just to acquire a ballot bestows second-class status upon the state’s largest bloc of voters.
Unaffiliated voters should not be burdened with incremental process requirements. Just mail everyone a ballot. Our goal is to make access to the ballot easier.
We want independent voters to be able to engage in primaries — it’s fair and makes for a more responsive democracy. But mandating that they affiliate with a party, even temporarily, is a tone-deaf non-starter in Colorado. In 2014, two out of every three newly registered Colorado voters proactively declined to affiliate with a party.
This bill is out of touch with the realities and preferences of today’s Colorado voters.
Denver The writer is a representative for Let Colorado Vote, which is backing an initiative to open primaries to unaffiliated voters.