Why vote? GOP doesn't see the need

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http://www.madison.com/tct/opinion/index.php?ntid=7079 & ntpid=5

 

John Nichols: Why vote? GOP doesn't see the need

 

By John Nichols

July 23, 2004

What with all the controversy that arose after one of

President Bush's appointees to the federal Election

Assistance Commission sought to establish guidelines

for suspending the November presidential election in

the event of a terrorist incident, citizens can be

excused for presuming that this is a radical new

notion. But it's not.

 

Borrowing several pages from the Joe Stalin Manual of

Electoral Etiquette, the president's Republican allies

canceled party primary elections in a number of states

across the country during this election season - on

the theory that President Bush was going to win them

anyway.

 

Last year, Republican-controlled legislatures in

Kansas, Colorado and Utah canceled their state-run

2004 presidential primaries. The pattern continued

even after the presidential campaign got going, with

the cancellation this year of presidential primaries

in Florida, New York, Connecticut, Mississippi, South

Carolina, South Dakota and Puerto Rico.

 

So it was that, while Democratic voters went to the

polls to express their presidential preferences and

select delegates to their party convention, the

Republican process in many of the same states was

effectively shut down. Instead of selecting delegates

in primaries that attract significant numbers of

voters, some of whom might dissent from party

orthodoxy, Republicans in key states chose to play

things out behind closed doors - in caucuses or other

" official " settings.

 

Why were so many Republican primaries canceled?

Officially, the line was that Republican legislators

and party leaders wanted to save the money it would

cost to hold the primaries that Bush would surely win.

 

Aside from the fact that canceling elections because

someone is expected to win creates a democratic

Catch-22, the cost-cutting talk is as bogus as the

claim that a clear Bush victory could be divined from

all those uncounted ballots from Florida's contested

2000 voting. The savings that can be achieved by

canceling an election are small, while the cost to

democracy is large. Indeed, when legislators voted to

cancel the party primaries in Arizona, Gov. Janet

Napolitano vetoed the measure and declared, " Arizona

can well afford the price of democracy. "

 

That is true of every state. So why did the

cancellations really occur?

 

Because Republican Party bosses did not want Bush to

be embarrassed by evidence of Republican opposition.

 

As it turns out, the concern was well founded. In

several states that held Republican primaries this

year, significant numbers of GOP voters rejected Bush.

 

In New Hampshire, for instance, 22 percent of citizens

who selected Republican presidential primary ballots

voted for someone other than Bush. (More than 3,000

New Hampshire Republican primary voters wrote in the

name of Democrat John Kerry.) In Rhode Island, more

than 15 percent of Republican primary voters rejected

Bush. In Idaho and Oklahoma, more than 10 percent of

Republicans cast Anyone-But-Bush votes, while almost

10 percent did so in Massachusetts. Even in the

president's home state of Texas, more than 50,000

Republican primary voters refused to back Bush.

 

Despite the convention show that Republican leaders

will put on in New York next month, Bush has inspired

a good deal of grumbling among the faithful. The

results from a number of the states that actually held

Republican primaries reflect that embarrassing fact.

There are no embarrassing results from states that

canceled Republican primaries - which, of course, was

the point of the cancellations.

 

No wonder so many Americans got scared when Bush

appointees started talking about plans to cancel the

November elections. Perhaps they have come to the

conclusion, based on all those canceled primaries,

that this administration and its minions believe

democracy is a tidier enterprise when the voters are excluded.