Bloomberg's Bad Idea

[rbnyc]

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20031117&s=editors3

On November 4, New York City is being asked to decide Question 3, a deceptively simple change to the city's charter that would eliminate the role of political parties in nominating candidates through primaries and instead adopt a "unitary ballot" listing all the people running for each office, followed by a runoff for the top two vote-getters.

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In this shrunken version of democracy, the parties often are little more than shells for laundering donations from wealthy special interests, through which lobbyists and interest groups who can "pay to play" get their concerns addressed.

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eliminating party primaries won't solve these problems; it will make them worse. Party primaries do help signal that candidates represent minimally different programs; parties also help recruit and filter candidates, and depending on their leadership, work to hold elected representatives accountable. In New York, where smaller parties thrive because fusion is legal, the Working Families Party has played a vital role in raising neglected issues, organizing underrepresented constituencies and nurturing new leaders. Party primaries also give racial minorities a chance to concentrate their votes. By contrast, a nonpartisan listing of candidates would repeat the cacophony of the California recall, where voters had to choose among a cattle call of contenders, and so gravitated to the ones with the most money and name recognition.

Mayor Bloomberg is spending at least $2 million on this charter change because, he claims, it will increase voter participation and reduce the power of "party bosses." But as Barnard College professor Lorraine Minnite points out, "We know from nearly a hundred years of experience with nonpartisan elections that these systems...depress turnout, further skew the upper-class bias of the electorate and privilege wealthy candidates or candidates with name recognition." In New York as in other places that have shifted to nonpartisan ballots, that means electing more Republicans.

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20031117&s=editors3

[rbnyc]

1. Today is the day...

...to vote against this crap!

:kick: