Report From the Field: Occupy Wall Street

Independent Voters on the Rise: Disappointed But Not Discouraged

Indies are increasingly disappointed by the performance of Congress, and the President, but the campaign for structural political reforms like open primaries, nonpartisan elections, independent redistricting, fair access to the ballot, citizen initiative and referendum and fusion is gaining ground nationally...   Closed primaries, which exclude independents from the crucial first round of voting, is one major structural obstacle to a vigorous democracy. (See www.OpenPrimaries.org)  Another obstacle is partisan control of redistricting, whereby state legislators – Republicans and Democrats all – carve up their state’s districts to guarantee the election of party-sanctioned candidates, using the power of partisan legislatures to support the status quo. Discriminatory ballot access requirements that are heavily biased against independent and third-party candidates, and the exclusion of such candidates from the nationally televised presidential debates jointly sponsored by the two major parties, are other obstacles. State laws that ban fusion and citizens’ initiative and referendum distance independents and all voters from the policy-making process.

National Conference Call for Independents.  Every six weeks, CUIP president Jacqueline Salit hosts America's largest ongoing national call for independents. She provides updates about what independents are doing around the country and how the movement is growing. Get connected, hear updates. 

Sign up here.

Listen to 6/27 conference call here.

Listen to 5/10 conference call here.

Listen to the 3/28 conference call here.

Read the transcript from Jackie Salit's 10/12 conference call here.

INDEPENDENT VOTERS

• Congress more unpopular than ever (By Jennifer Agiesta and Laurie Kellman, Chicago Sun Times) Much about the next election hinges on independent voters, the ever-growing group fiercely wooed by campaigns for years. Among them, 65 percent say they want their own House representative tossed out in 2012, compared with 53 percent of respondents generally.


• AP-GfK Poll: 87% in US disapprove of Congress (By LAURIE KELLMAN, The Associated Press - Atlanta Journal Constitution) Republicans and Democrats statistically tied, 40 percent to 43 percent respectively, when respondents were asked which party they trust more to handle the federal budget deficit. Nearly a third of independents said they trust neither party on the issue.


• Independents WANT Obama to fight GOP harder (By Greg Sargent, Washington Post/The Plum Line) Pew poll:     A 37% plurality now contends that Obama should challenge the Republicans in Congress more often; 25% say Obama should go along with GOP leaders more frequently, while about the same percentage (26%) say he is handling the situation about right. In April, fewer (27%) said Obama should challenge GOP congressional leaders more often.


• Charlie Cook: Travels With Charlie: America's Summer of Discontent (National Journal) But the fact that so much discontent exists in both parties is a sign of something deeply corrosive happening in this country. It isn’t just independent voters who have a derisive view of politics, elected officials, and public institutions. There is a growing sense that few good people are going into politics, and that many of those who are currently in office — people who are smart, experienced, and well-intentioned — are somehow neutralized, co-opted, or thwarted. A sense that institutions are failing, and no sense that they are being replaced with something that will succeed.

Building the Arsenal of Political Reform: Proportional Representation and Internet Voting

POLITICAL REFORM

• The best way to fight the two-party monopoly (By Michael Lind, SALON) Most of the world’s democracies have adopted one or another version of proportional representation (PR), an electoral system that more or less accurately reflects the diversity of political views among the country’s citizens. Unfortunately, from 18th century Britain the U.S. inherited the older, less representative system called plurality voting or "first past the post" voting.


• Natalie Tennant: Internet Voting Profile in Courage (by William J. Kelleher, Ph.D., The Hankster) Just as in the military, a Secretary of State, or any public official, deserves praise whenever they show courage under fire. Tennant showed this courage when she went ahead with her Internet voting trial for overseas military voters. As she stated on the WV SOS website. "The members of our military are putting their lives on the line every day … I thought it was extremely important to make sure they had secure access to an online ballot. We had to make sure their voice was heard."

More Voters Walking Away From Two-Party System - A Case for Top Two

It's never been more clear that in order for new ideas, new alliances, new directions to emerge in our country, independents -- those who choose to go outside the box politically -- need to be included in our political process. Top two open primaries is one structural reform that is gaining support all over the country, much to the distress of the parties...

TOP TWO OPEN PRIMARIES

• More voters walking away from Democrat and Republican parties (AZ Central/Laurie Roberts' Columns & Blog) Meanwhile, with each set of new registration numbers, more and more Arizona voters are walking away from the two-party system. Yet the system remains, just as it has since statehood. When are we going to get around to dropping this antiquated system and going to a general and a runoff, where everybody votes on all the candidates regardless of party designation?
  
• Independent voters continue to rack up numbers (By David Rookhuyzen, Green Valley News) The state’s voting system could also be contributing to the high number of unaffiliated voters. Independents in Arizona can vote in any party’s primary election, except the Green Party, meaning there is no penalty for not having a party affiliation, Davis said. However, independents in Arizona are barred from voting in the presidential primary — or Presidential Preference Election — next year, which is reserved for members of the major parties.
  
• South Carolina Republicans Win Opportunity to Present Evidence Against Open Primary (Ballot Access News) On July 18, a U.S. District Court Judge in South Carolina issued an 8-page Opinion in Greenville County Republican Party v State, 6:10-cv-1407, the case in which the South Carolina Republican Party argues that the Constitution protects its ability to limit its primaries to party members.
• California State Appeals Court Sets Oral Argument in Case Against Two Aspects of “Top-Two” (Ballot Access News) This is one of the two cases that challenges two particular details of the Proposition 14 “top-two” system...

Americans Elect: Online Democracy for Nominating a 2012 Presidential Candidate

FreshDirect.com's founder Peter Ackerman has bankrolled a new petitioning drive/ internet presidential nomination process that hopes to bring forth a "centrist" or bi-partisan 2012 candidate. Americans Elect participants go online and create a profile of their priorities and will eventually create the debate, make choices for candidates, and hopefully influence the 2012 race. Whether the Unity '08 strategy of a bipartisan ticket can be revived this year, and whether there even is such a thing as a political "center" in America, remains to be seen.

Nevertheless, the group's on-the-ground petitioning drive is already impressive! 50-state access by an independent ticket to the Presidential ballot has been done twice before in the past 25 years -- Lenora Fulani in 1988, and Ross Perot in 1992.

Unfortunately, however, the very issue that can free us up from the partisan gridlock -- political reforms such as open primaries, nonpartisan redistricting, initiative and referendum, etc. -- is not an available choice on the Americans Elect profile at the moment. We would urge Americans Elect to include STRUCTURAL POLITICAL REFORM as a choice for priority. Working along side Jackie Salit's independentvoting.org networks and other extra-partisan efforts could be powerful.

Whatever the outcome of the American's Elect process, The Hankster wishes the initiative all the best.

AMERICANS ELECT

• Make Way for the Radical Center (By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, NY Times) Thanks to a quiet political start-up that is now ready to show its hand, a viable, centrist, third presidential ticket, elected by an Internet convention, is going to emerge in 2012. … (President Obama should dump the Democrats and run as an independent, which he is, at heart, anyway.)
• The Web’s Stealth Presidential Race - Big names have quietly launched an Internet presidential race that will offer the winner a real election ballot spot in all 50 states. Will this be 2012’s spoiler? (John Avlon, The Daily Beast) That’s the idealist vision driving a new group, Americans Elect, which has quietly collected enough signatures to secure a 2012 ballot line in eight states, including Arizona, Michigan, and Missouri. They will soon submit an unprecedented 1.6 million signatures in California… The money behind Americans Elect understands disruptive business models. The group’s founder, entrepreneur Peter Ackerman (father of Elliot), started FreshDirect.com… He and some 50 other initial donors have loaned the organization $20 million, out of an eventual $30 million budgeted, to be repaid if small donors join on.

What Can Change in America: The Structure of Politics

STRUCTURAL POLITICAL REFORM
A way out of our dysfunctional politics (By Fareed Zakaria, Washington Post/Opinions) What has steadily changed over the past three or four decades is not so much the ideological intensity (though it has grown) but the structure of politics, making it more beholden to narrow, specialized interests — including ideological ones — rather than broader national ones....

...It’s depressing — but the fact that our politics are the result of structural shifts means that they can be changed. Mickey Edwards, a Republican and a former House member from Oklahoma, has a highly intelligent essay in Atlantic magazine, suggesting a series of reforms that could make a difference. Some of them are large-scale, such as creating truly open primaries and handing over the power of redistricting to independent commissions. Others are seemingly small but crucial changes in congressional procedure and practice, for example, filling committee vacancies by lot and staffing committees with professionals rather than with political apparatchiks.... [more]

For more on this topic, read Jackie Salit's The Parties Are Over from NY Newsday, October 2010