Xen rants:
Read Ed Achorn 's article this AM. He kind of ticks me off lately. Though I agree that we shouldn't have the "party lever" on the ballots, it seems to me that the biggest annoyance is the simple utter DEMOCRAT-NESS of RI - and the biggest PROBLEM is voter apathy.
The little guys who wanted reform in the state assembly weren't "hurt" by the all Democrat vote as much as the STATE was hurt because so many people ran unopposed. Think of that. In a time when you can't have TWO people agree on ANYTHING, and when everyone is "special", this state has that many positions where NO ONE WANTS TO EVEN TRY TO GET ELECTED. Makes zero sense to me .
Anyway... it's just the same old, same old. My point about Achorn's article was that this was a waste of newsprint. It was better than taking the election day space and using it as a (very nice, but misplaced) tribute to a relative... but still, I don't agree with his assessment that "if you take away all straight party votes, then Chaffee would have won". He even mentions that a lot of people would have STILL voted for Whitehouse ... so right there he undermines the argument. It's just so flawed that it's a pointless argument. And there are bigger things to write about ... even if it IS totally his "opinion".
So there. It's MY opinion that I disagree. And more and more I am finding his weekly article less worth it.
Sassette Responds:
Just read the Achorn article… I find it rather meandering in its focus.
Boo-hoo-hoo Ed, your preferred party didn’t fare well. Rather than blame voter apathy, unpolled cell phone using dems, Harrah’s union donations, and straight-ticket voting; how about acknowledging that people are incredibly tired of this republican administration? We’re tired of lies, obfuscation, and rising death counts in Iraq.
You can say what you want about the evils of the straight-ticket vote and the unions – but Chaffee’s held that seat for over thirty (?) years. The fact that a beloved New England Republican with a household name got trounced is a direct reflection on the opposite of voter apathy. It shows voter bitterness with the Republican party. Chaffee has been a republican all along, and the straight-ticket option has been available for over a century – so you need to look at what was DIFFERENT this time around…. And quit yer whining, Eddie.
The Actual Article from Providence Journal Opinion Columnist Edward Achorn:
Edward Achorn: A system that promotes 'voting without thinking'
01:00 AM EST on Tuesday, November 28, 2006
THE NOV. 7 ELECTION in Rhode Island did not go the way the pollsters predicted. They had Governor Carcieri up by roughly 7 points -- in poll after poll -- and saw Sen. Lincoln Chafee dramatically closing the gap in the waning days against Sheldon Whitehouse.
The results, thus, were stunning: Mr. Whitehouse won in a cakewalk, and Mr. Carcieri very nearly got heaved out of office. Clearly, many Democratic voters whom the pollsters were unable to reach turned out at the polls. Were they cell-phone owners, difficult to poll? Were they rare or casual voters, and thus absent from the lists that form the basis for the polling of "likely" voters?
We know that Harrah's was pushing hard for its casino, and that casino supporters strongly favored Democrats. And we know that Harrah's gave the labor unions, through WorkingRI, $200,000 to help get out gambling-friendly voters. Meanwhile, many of the motivated voters across America were angry at Republicans over America's failure to halt violence in Iraq, blaming that on President Bush.
The most striking impact was a huge upsurge in the number of Rhode Island voters casting straight-party ballots -- checking off their desire to vote for the entire slate of Democrats, up and down the ballot, rather than taking the time and using their brains to weigh individual candidates.
The straight-party voting option is the legacy of 19th and 20th-Century machine politics. The political bosses did not want voters thinking independently -- they wanted them marching in lockstep, with the promise of patronage and taxpayer-funded benefits in exchange for party loyalty. Years ago, voters pulled an actual lever to punch the names of all of one party's candidates.
Fifty years ago, more than half of the states allowed straight-party voting. But in recent years, states have weaned themselves off the system, on the sensible grounds that it too strongly favors the dominant party and that voters should be encouraged to do their homework as citizens and weigh individual candidates. The straight-party system tends to devastate the minority party in down-ballot races, such as for state legislature.
"It seems pretty clear that what it was designed for is to keep people voting for a particular party without thinking about who they were voting for," Richard Niemi, a University of Rochester political-science professor, told the newspaper The Hill.
Which may be why Rhode Island is one of only 16 states still clinging to the machine legacy. (The others are Alabama, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, West Virginia and Wisconsin.) In the Ocean State, the party in power impressively has every angle covered. Our election laws are designed to help preserve and consolidate majority power, rather than encourage competitive elections.
On Nov. 7, the straight-party system worked its wonders for Rhode Island Democrats. Some 61,357 voters cast a straight-party ballot for the Democrats -- a whopping increase of more than 23,000, or about two-thirds, over the last midterm election. Only 18,424 cast straight ballots for Republicans.
That obviously gave Mr. Whitehouse a dramatic boost, and quite possibly the winning edge. Subtract the straight-party ballots, and Mr. Chafee beat Mr. Whitehouse handily. It appears that Mr. Chafee was the preference of voters who actually took the time to mark their ballots for either candidate.
Thus, one could argue the straight-party option in Rhode Island had a tremendous impact on Nov. 7, helping flip control of the Senate from the Republicans to the Democrats.
Of course, it seems likely that many -- if not most -- of those straight-party-ballot voters would have opted for the Democrat, in any case. But many might have sided with Mr. Chafee, whose last name is virtually a brand, and whose liberal values seem to represent those of most Rhode Islanders.
The people who really suffered, though, were down the ballot -- the reformers trying to bring more balance to the General Assembly. They got swept away in the flood. Many of the casual voters who went straight-ticket -- and thus returned the local incumbent to power -- probably never heard of either candidate in those races.
Interestingly, this phenomenon played out nationally. Of the 29 seats that House Republicans lost, 15 were in the 16 states with the straight-party option -- and another three races from those states could possibly flip, the Hill reported.
There are efforts underway in many of those states to change the system. Citizens groups and the out party tend to push for reform, while the party in power resists. It's not hard to understand why Republicans tend to support the reform more than Democrats. The latter party's incestuous relationship with public-employee unions gives it a ready-made get-out-the-vote machine, well-suited to encouraging people to vote the straight Democratic ticket.
In other words, don't hold your breath waiting for this reform to reach Rhode Island.
