Tiresome Two-Party System, Open Primaries and Unholy Alliances

Our two-party system creates a point-counterpoint tiresome spin cycle, says Bonnie Erbe on the Thomas Jefferson Street blog. She likes multi-party democracy but doesn't see any quick path to that result. Rep. Eugene DePasquale, D-York, with support from Pennsylvania Independents, has introduced an open primary bill into the PA legislature. Some conservative anti-Proposition 14 California Repubs think the multi-party opposition to the Prop 14 open primary initiative is an "unholy alliance". Maybe these forces think ANY alliance is unholy by definition? You might notice that The Hankster occasionally covers the Tea Party, but hardly ever the Coffee Party. The reason for that is that The Hankster covers the media that covers the independent movement and the MSM associates independents with the conservative Tea Party movement, but not the Coffee Party. However, I've got my eye out for welcome signs from the progressive Coffee Party to independents.... Meanwhile, some gays want a separate nation-state.


INDEPENDENT VOTERS

• Can Voters Change the Two-Party, Democrat-Republican System? (Bonnie Erbe, US News & World Report/Thomas Jefferson Street blog)
• Voters in Yuma County feeling independent too (BY TERRY ROSS - NEWS AND INFORMATION CENTER DIRECTOR, Yuma Sun - AZ)

OPEN PRIMARIES

• PA: 1 million voters left out in primary (By Brad Bumsted, PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW) "We pay taxes, and we can't participate," said Stephen Bouikidis, a software company executive from Jenkintown in Montgomery County, who is a founder of Independent Pennsylvanians, a group advocating open primaries. "This is the biggest issue for us. We're locked out of the system."
• PA: Editorial: Pennsylvania primaries should be opened (Chambersburg PA Public Opinion Online)
• FL: Reform the primaries and untie our hands (Mary Ann Lindley, Editorial Page Editor, Tallahassee Democrat) To vote for whom you like in this state, you have to be more cunning than party organizations that hold more power than any individual candidate, that hold the purse strings, that call the shots and that are so good at this manipulation that politics has become more like the NFL than representative government. Too many voters are left sitting on the bench.
• OH: Officials talk directive (By MIKE BURKHOLDER, Managing Editor, The Evening Leader - OH) "Failure to enforce the challenge statutes essentially changes the nature of the primary into an unconstitutional open primary," Ortega said.

PROP 14

• Open primaries, better government (Daily Breeze - LA) The unlikely bipartisan coalition of opponents to Proposition 14, the "top-two" open primary initiative on the June 8 ballot, tells us a lot about who's worried about their power.
• Reader Rebuttal: Jeannie English: Proposition 14 (By JEANNINE ENGLISH, President, AARP California, Co-Chair of Californians for an Open Primary, OC Register)
• LOCAL VIEW: Prop. 14 will shutter political process (North County Times) Unfortunately, the opposite is true. Prop. 14 would, in fact, abrogate primaries and replace them with two general elections, causing the effective disappearance of all minor parties from the November election. No surprise, then, that an unholy alliance of the California Democratic and Republican parties, the Libertarian Party and the ACLU all forcefully oppose it.
• The Buzz: More than 650 candidates running in June 8 primary (Sac Bee)

TEA PARTY

• State GOP doing aggressive outreach with Tea Party movement (by Betsy Sundquist, Politics In Minnesota blog)

LAST WORD

• Graham Elected President of FIGS, International Gay Independence Party Grows; Launching Int’l Gay News Network Part of Platform (Street Insider PRESS RELEASE) Members are known to one another as “Figgies” and advocate for a politically autonomous Gay Nation-State and stress their demands for Gay independence.