Once again I'm finding myself in kind of an awkward position thanks to Ohio election laws. I really, really, really want to see Kucinich as the Democrats' nominee for President, but at the same time, I don't know if I should campaign for him in the primaries because I refuse to vote for him in the primary. It isn't that I don't support Dennis, because I do, but according to Ohio election law, if I vote in the Democrat presidential primary then that officially makes me, according to Ohio, a registered Democrat, and I don't want to be a Democrat. If Dennis doesn't get the nomination, then I'll probably vote for the Green Party candidate in November, simply because I'll wind up agreeing with the Green Party candidate much more than I'll wind up agreeing with the Democratic candidate.

There's also the fact that being a registered Democrat in Ohio can be risky. I was in my first semester of grad school in November 2004, and one of my Democrat classmates wound up being victimized by state Republicans. A Republican challenged her voter registration, by claiming that she hadn't lived at her present residence for at least a year before the election, even though she had. Now, according to Ohio law these challenges can only go to court if the notices are mailed out two weeks before the election, and my classmate's notice was mailed right at the deadline. However, by some weird happenstance (gee I wonder what), she only received her notice five days before the election, and her hearing was scheduled for the Saturday before the election. She had already been scheduled for work that day, and thus she was forced to choose between voting and keeping her job, and of course she chose to work that day being a grad student and all. One of my classmates experienced first-hand the Republican effort to suppress Democratic voters, so all the right-wing commentators who claim that those efforts were just a construct of the so-called "liberal media" make me sick.

Of course, I should also note here that Ohio Democrats were so gung-ho on suppressing Ralph Nader that they not only made sure that his name didn't appear on the 2004 ballot, but even pressed to make sure that his write-in votes wouldn't be tallied. I still think that if Ohio Democrats had put more effort into promoting Kerry than trying to screw over Nader (and David Cobb, the official Green Party candidate), even the Republicans' best efforts would have failed and Kerry would have carried Ohio and won the election.

Still, I feel like I'm in a difficult position, because I want to support Kucinich but I don't want the baggage that the state of Ohio would attach to me voting for him in the primary. I really can't stand how the Republicans and Democrats have set things up across the country so that they've effectively got a duopoly on political power, and as much attention is paid these days (and rightfully so) to Republican efforts to create a permanent Republican lock on political power, I think more attention needs to be paid to Democrats' efforts to lock other political parties out of the electoral process.

Comment by  joepet at 15/3/07 02:49:
Couldn't you just vote in both the Democratic and Republican primaries? Then people wouldn't know what you are...

 

Comment by  Tom at 15/3/07 11:30:
If a marvelous candidate became the Democratic Party nominee, it would be like serving a great dinner on last night's dirty dishes. Dennis Kuchinich should get out of the party and avoid its corruption. A third party must become this country's second or first party in order for the reforms you desire to occur.

 

Comment by  Sean at 15/3/07 12:34:
Joe: I don't think people know what I am anyway. :D Seriously, I think voting in both primaries is a violation of Ohio law and could send me to jail.

Tom: I definitely agree with you on the need to break the two-party duopoly in the US, but at the same time I also recognize that Kucinich came from a time when Democrats really did care for the common people, and that he wants to work to bring his party back to that spot. Personally I think it's too late to get Big Money out of the Democratic Party (which is why I vote Green whenever possible), but I still respect why Kucinich chooses to remain a Democrat.

 

Comment by  joepet at 15/3/07 18:20:
OK...I see that Ohio's is more or less a closed primary system, though it is commented that the laws are "loosely enforced".

Breaking the duopoly is not the silver bullet to fix America's problems. We have many parties in Japan...that align themselves in coalitions to form the "ruling parties", while the remainer align themselves against the ruling parties. The end result is that you have two sides, but it takes more talking and more bickering to get to a vote, so things rarely get decided and change moves at a snail's pace.

 

Comment by  Sean at 16/3/07 15:36:
I don't want to sound like I'm suggesting that having more than two strong political parties in the US would be a "silver bullet," but it would at least be better than what we've got now.

Case in point: The Democrat who ran for (and won) Rick Santorum's old seat was pro-Iraq war and pro-life. The Green Party tried to run a candidate in that slot, but not only did the election laws in Pennsylvania allow the Democrats there to litigate the Green Party candidate out of the race, but said candidate then wound up having to pay something like a $1.7 million legal judgment. At least if we had a political system that wasn't so closed-off and rigged, Pennsylvania voters who were anti-war and pro-choice would have had some kind of option to vote for in the last election.

 

Comment by  joepet at 22/3/07 04:06:
Pennsylvania voters who were anti-war and pro-choice did have some kind of option to vote for in the last election. It's called the Write-In Ballot. Especially in Pennsylvania, as Pennsylvania law requires that all write-in votes be tallied, even if the candidate does not declare himself a write-in candidate.

 

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