Probably in anticipation of the NYC Charter Revision Commission’s preliminary report that was issued last week, the Wall Street Journal made a rather strong projection in an article on Thursday evening saying nonpartisan elections will “probably not be on the ballot” in the fall.
There’s been lots of chatter about how much discussion there needs to be about nonpartisan elections before it goes before the voters. (After all, the Commission is not deciding whether NYC will have nonpartisan elections. The Commission is deciding what issues the voters will have an opportunity to vote on.)
During the initial public hearings, there were many statements in favor of nonpartisans, particularly from youth. Increasingly, young people are becoming independent. In fact, nationally about 43% of Americans consider themselves to be independent. In NYC, a million registered independents are denied a vote in the decisive first round of voting. Fewer and fewer people are voting in that decisive round — partisan primaries.
Citizens Union, the venerable government watchdog group, issued a report on Wednesday favoring nonpartisan elections (read the NY Times article here). On June 8, Californians voted – again – for open primaries in the form of Proposition 14. And ever since the primaries for the 2008 presidential election, there’s been a national hue and cry about independents being locked out of elections. It’s independents who determine elections.
Nonpartisan elections and open primaries is practically supper table talk all across America.
So, as we continue to debate nonpartisan elections, the Commission should give NYC voters a chance to vote on it. To not do so simply perpetuates an undemocratic exclusionary and corrupt partisan system that is increasingly dangerous to the country.
For more news for independents, see The Hankster
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.