State Rep. Ed Casso’s bill to allow unaffiliated voters to request a ballot to vote in state primaries failed in the House, and we’re fine with that — especially given the cost to make the change was expected to be $245,560.
The House Bill 2012 concept amounts to a guest pass that would have allowed a voter to request a ballot to vote in a party’s primary and yet remain unaffiliated.
We can accept the argument that an unaffiliated voter just wants to vote for the best candidate based on personal values, not party values. But we think the choices made in primaries should be reserved for the citizen who is willing to stand up and be counted as part of one party or another.
As it stands now, it’s pretty simple for an unaffiliated voter to declare to be with one party in order to vote in a primary and then simply switch back to being unaffiliated later.
But by declaring with a party—usually Republican or Democratic—before voting in a primary, we suggest that the voter with some degree of earnestness should employ the values of that party to make a choice for a candidate that best represents that party.
If a voter does not subscribe to a party’s values, he or she should simply not vote in the primary and instead wait until the next round—the general election—when he or she can weigh their core values against the backdrop of candidates in multiple parties.
Unfortunately it is true that an underhanded voter can become affiliated with a party and vote for the candidate who seems to be more defeatable by the candidate in the other party. We encourage people not to undermine the system in this way.
To the good, this bill has given us pause to think about our system and how it works. We find we have a system that is closed, but operates in a relatively open way. The voting process for primaries in Colorado is relatively fluid.
We like it. It works reasonably well. We think voters should continue to be required to sign in as a party member before filling out a ballot. Let’s not change it. No guests allowed.
Editor’s note: We are pleased that House Bill 1098 and Senate Bill 97—which we opposed in our editorial last week—failed in committee. We believe the current practice of having legal newspapers, as an established third party, publish legal notices serves the public’s right to know and the needed integrity of making permanent records of legals. The costs are reasonable and general practice is to also post the legals online for added visibility.