Sen Delph’s SB 146 would remove straight party voting as an option on the ballot. I’m cynical enough to imagine the expectation is that this would hurt Democrats more than Republicans, otherwise Sen. Delph wouldn’t be inclined to introduce it. That said, I’m generally supportive of the notion because of the fact that political parties aren’t specifically contemplated by the state or federal Constitutions. In fact, I’d modestly propose the legislation go one step further and eliminate indicators of political party affiliation from the ballot entirely. I wonder how far that would go toward reducing the tribalism of voters.
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[…] remove the option of straight party ticket voting from Indiana election ballots. As Doug Masson notes, this change would probably favor the Republican party in most […]
Oddly, I think it would hurt the Republican Party in Hamilton County – Delph’s home. I have blogged at least twice on my own blog about mindless straight-Republican voting there. I can’t imagine that the Hamilton County Republican leadership would like this.
I think it’s fantastic! Causing voters to actually look at the roster of candidates individually, rather than blindly checking one party, could only be good. I’m thinking of the recent election that included Secretary of State as a prime example.
No party with a stronghold in any region will like this- Rs in Hamilton County, Ds in Marion County’s Center Twp, or Lake County, etc., thus it probably has no chance of passage.
Remove party from the ballot completely. If you know enough about them to vote for them, you know their party.
They did this in Illinois. It didn’t make a damn bit of difference. If anything, the Democrats are stronger there now than ever.
There is no question that in Indiana, there are more straight ticket Democrat votes than Republican. There are precincts in Gary that have straight ticket Democrat voting rates of 100:1. I would guess that it is similar in Marion county. Where there is Republican straight ticket voting, it never even comes close to that rate.
Has to be a scam to make it easier to switch votes around with the software on the Republican-owned corporation voting machines we use. All so easily hacked.
imho
Oh, but we don’t talk about THAT possibility for ELECTION fraud, do we?
I’m amazed at the crap we take for granted. Yeah: where do we get straight-party voting for one of the two parties in our 1.001 party system? Thanks for mentioning it.
Libertarians have previously had straight-party voting rights as the “permanent” third party on the ballot. Any other party which meets the voting threshold in the Secretary of State’s race would also qualify, and I believe they can also qualify by petition. In the past the threshold was much lower, I recall seeing many other parties, including Socialist Workers and Communist, on the ballot in the 1970s.