Today is primary day and 3.5 million Flori

Wednesday, September 07, 2011

Cure for Partisanship: Less Reality, More Artificiality

Note to Stuart Rotherberg: " The reality of our current politics of division and partisanship is not what many would prefer, but at least it is real." At least it's real?? With a reality like this, maybe we should try more artificiality. At least THAT we could live with!

OPEN PRIMARIES

  • Political Unity Peaked After Attacks (By Stuart Rothenberg, Roll Call) There are possible institutional changes that could produce more centrist elected officials — more open primaries, more states using commissions to draw Congressional and legislative district lines, a third political party in the center, for example — but those changes are difficult to bring about, and it isn’t clear how much change each proposal would produce. The reality of our current politics of division and partisanship is not what many would prefer, but at least it is real. Those periods after 9/11 and after Giffords’ near-fatal attack, when Americans focused on self-reflection and healing, were aberrations. Both tragedies created artificial moments of when important public policy questions were put aside.
  • State Senate set to ban general election write-in voting (by Damon Eris, CAIVN) Today, the State Senate is scheduled to vote on AB 1413, a bill that would address this inconsistency by banning all write-in candidates from the general election ballot for voter-nominated offices and removing the space for write-in votes from the those ballots.  The bill under consideration in the Senate is substantially different from the one that was initially  proposed in the Assembly and passed through committee.  AB 1413 was introduced into the legislature on March 14th by the chair of the Assembly's Committee on Elections and Redistricting, Paul Fong.
  • Parties active in nonpartisan election - Turnout could be higher from efforts by Republicans and Democrats. (BY ANDREW KENNEY, The Cary News - NC) On Election Day municipal candidates won't be identified with the political parties that dominate state and national races, but party volunteers standing just outside the polls will make sure voters know who's who.

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