Ruy May Rue the Day He Dismissed Independent Voters - And Their Bond With African Americans

INDEPENDENTVOTING.ORG NETWORKS

• Ruy the Day! A Review of Ruy Teixeira's Review of The Swing Vote: The Untapped Power of Independents by Linda Killian (by Jacqueline Salit, Huffington Post) Wow! For a man (actually, make that a MAN) who has devoted his political career to resuscitating a Democratic Party governing majority (he co-wrote The Emerging Democratic Majority in 2002), you would think he'd be a little more cautious about denouncing independents. Otherwise, his hoped for majority may get another slam, as it did in 2010 when independents expressed their disappointment and frustration with President Obama's inability to conquer the partisanship in Washington, including the partisanship of his own party. Ruy might rue the day he tried to tear down Killian and the volatile movement-in-the-making she writes about.
• LINDA KILLIAN OUTBREAK: The Uses of Polarization (By THOMAS B. EDSALL, NY Times/ The Opinion Pages/ Campaign Stops) At the same time, the percentage of the electorate that can accurately be described as independent — without partisan allegiance — has shrunk to about 7 percent, according to Ruy Teixeira of the Brookings Institution. While the importance of such voters has diminished, in a closely balanced contest these relatively uninvolved men and women have the power to determine the outcome: in the 12 presidential elections from 1964 to 2008, four – 1968, 1976, 2000 and 2004 – have been decided by 2.5 percentage points or less.
• Historic Bond Ties African-Americans and Independents Together (LETTER The Hankster, by Bob Friedman, PHOTOS online) Last week I joined Rev. Al Sharpton and the National Action Network on the march from Selma to Montgomery. I am one of the 40% of Americans who are independent of both of the major parties. Back in the days of Ross Perot, the media called guys like me "angry white men." Along the route, I spoke with many people and brought greetings from Dr. Lenora Fulani, the country’s leading African American independent with whom I’ve worked closely and from IndependentVoting.org, the country’s largest organization of independent voters of which I’m a part.
• YOUR VIEW: Independent voters disfranchised in many states because of parties (Bob Friedman, Letters from our readers By Letters from our readers, Alabama.com) I want to respond to and applaud the Your Views letter "Alabama's closed primary infringes on voters' rights" in the March 10 Birmingham News by sharing the following. I couldn't agree more that since we pay for the primaries, they should be nonpartisan, more like "top two" as they have in California.
• The black vote: 5 states where Obama needs a big African-American turnout (By Perry Bacon Jr.,The Grio) President Obama's campaign will likely need the kind of strong black turnout he received in 2008 to win re-election, particularly if some of the white independent voters who backed him four years ago opt for the Republican candidate because of frustration over the president's tenure.

Historic Bond Ties African-Americans and Independents Together

The Historic Bond that Ties African-Americans and Independents Together
By Bob Friedman

Last week I joined Rev. Al Sharpton and the National Action Network on the march from Selma to Montgomery. I am one of the 40% of Americans who are independent of both of the major parties. Back in the days of Ross Perot, the media called guys like me "angry white men."


Along the route, I spoke with many people and brought greetings from Dr. Lenora Fulani, the country’s leading African American independent with whom I’ve worked closely and from IndependentVoting.org, the country’s largest organization of independent voters of which I’m a part.

I have been an independent activist concerned with voters’ rights for many years. In Birmingham, as chair of the Petitioners Alliance, I helped lead the first citywide Initiative & Referendum movement. With Senator Hank Sanders, one of the sponsors of this historic march, I wrote legislation to open access to the Alabama ballot. And with Rep. Demetrius Newton, I designed legislation for proportional democratic selection of presidential electors. As independents, we fight for reforms that not only protect the right to vote. They increase the power of the vote.

For this march, I was proud to have fellow independents Mark Bodenhausen and Lorna Lindsey join me for the historic bridge crossing in Selma. Lorna had never been to a major demonstration before. We added our voices to the call for an end to voter ID laws that suppress the full participation of all our citizens. Independents have experienced disenfranchisement ourselves. We know that when partisan interests wave a flag about so-called voter fraud in an election year, you can pretty much count on the fact that they’re doing it for partisan reasons, not to protect our democracy.

Partisanship is destroying our democracy and making our government incapable of moving our country forward. I far from alone in this concern. Right now, our Congress has a 97% disapproval rating. Most Americans look at Congress and see how partisan its behavior is and feel angry that our government is not working for them.

We need to broaden participation in our democracy, not narrow it. We need to make sure that no American is turned away from the polls because they don’t have the right ID. And that means photo ID, State ID and political ID. In 26 states, independents are prevented from voting in primaries, not because they don’t have an ID, but because they don’t belong to a party! That’s just wrong.

There is an historic bond that ties African Americans and independents together. That bond is based on our shared belief that our democracy must work for everyone, not just the powerful, not just the parties—but for the people!

Bob Friedman
Birmingham, AL 
205-701-2799