Story by Randy Miller
I now have a life experience that I share with a very small group of people; I ran for public office as a non-partisan candidate in a partisan race. (and I polled over 20% in doing so, even 39% and 42% in the 2 highest precincts)
Utah is home to 1.5 Million registered voters, 51.5% of which selected “unaffiliated” on their voter registration. Not to come off as a statistician, but I postulated that the votes cast in my race would not deviate far from a representative sample of voter identification (which for Davis County is 49% R, 42% u, 8% D and 1% all others)*—-
*From memory, not authoritative
Well, needless to say, I did not prevail in the race. It was hard not to take disappointment personally when the results didn’t even match a reasonable projection of a point spread. Near record low voter turnout clearly did not help. Initially I wanted to write something like losing doesn’t feel good no matter how unlikely a victory was at the outset. Upon closer examination of the results I can make a more realisitic even optimistic assessment by comparing the experience to scrimmaging an NFL team with close friends and family, some borrowed dirty practice jersey and no pads or helmets. While we took a shellacking, we put some numbers on the board against the pros, and that feels pretty darn swell!
So, since Nov. 2nd until now, I have had to pinch myself daily to remind myself that it (the election) never was about me. It was about people having representation without a party obstacle in an admittedly very obscure office….
Continue reading here. Miller is the founder of Utah League of Independent Voters.
Provocateur/ pundit/ organizer Nancy Hanks is a long-time activist in the independent political movement who’s done it all: petitioning to put independent candidates on the ballot from New York to Texas and points east, west, north and south; fundraising for the independent think tank, the Committee for a Unified Independent Party (CUIP), and its online counterpart, IndependentVoting.org; running as an independent for New York City Council from Queens, New York City’s most diverse borough; serving as the current Treasurer of the Queens County Committee of the Independence Party of New York (of the IP NYC Organizations); conducting research for the Neo-Independent, a magazine that addresses the concerns of independent voters.