Syracuse New Times, August 31, 2005
Party Nuts
You can register to vote in any party you like, thanks in part to the forward-thinking Greens
By Walt Shepperd
For the past two years it has been possible to create your own political party simply by writing its name on Onondaga County's voter registration form. A lawsuit brought by the Green Party to maintain the identity of its members, even though the party lost its ballot status after the 2002 election, enabled this extension of the individual democratic right.
To have its name appear automatically on the ballot in New York state, a party must have tallied at least 50,000 votes in the previous gubernatorial election. Losing that status means a party must spend painstaking hours amassing requisite numbers of signatures on nominating petitions to place its candidates on the list with the big dogs. In 1998, running highly politicized television actor Al "Grampa Munster" Lewis for governor got the Greens enough votes to be on the line for the next four years. In 2002, however, running highly politicized academic Stanley Aronowitz for governor didn't do the job.
The Greens lost their "permanent" ballot status, as did the Liberal and Right-to-Life parties. According to state election policy, the members registered in those parties were alerted that their party no longer existed officially, were asked if they wished another designation and, if they did not respond, were relisted as non-enrolled.
The Greens' suit, which the Marijuana Reform Party and Libertarian Party jumped on when the going looked good, changed all that. Although none of the five aforementioned parties amassed the magic 50,000 in 2002, because they had been on the ballot that year, local boards of elections must recognize their members' political identities as official by maintaining a file, by party, of their registration forms.
At the Onondaga County Board of Elections there is an additional file for the registration forms of the 43 voters who signed themselves up for membership on "other" political parties. Some provide low-decibel blasts from the past. There is one Communist registered in Onondaga County, for instance, one Socialist and one official member of the Socialist Workers Party. Others take the party concept more literally. There are two voters signed up for the Birthday Party and one whose party is Never Ending. Still others have personalized their political affiliations. Charles D. Dunn Jr. registered himself in the Chas D. Dunn Jr. Party and Garrett Wilkins, who lives on Trinity Place, affirmed his turf loyalty to the South Beech Party, honoring one of the two cross streets on block.
Perhaps none of the county's iconic registrants may muster the juice necessary to force issues onto major-party agendas, the role historically played by minor parties with endurance. Yet it's important to remember that the efforts of the Populist Party, the Progressive Party, even the old Socialist Party--which logged 919,799 votes for 1920 presidential candidate Eugene Debs as he sat in a jail cell stumping for an eight-hour work day--rerouted mainstream politics.
But the Greens, who started the local geometric multiplication of parties with their suit maintaining the official registration of their 1,041 members, seem to be creeping toward impact. Their progress is partly due to the party's national network, from which it can point to examples of realization of some of their goals. Their call for a municipal utility company grows more attractive with each increasing Niagara Mohawk bill and the growing realization that the establishment of municipal power in Solvay and Skaneateles required a less-than-revolutionary process. The Green tendencies toward decentralization and extended representation, however, seem to be finding resonance among folks who don't spend much time worrying about ideology.
Most intriguing of the Green proposals is the concept of single transferable voting, also known as instant runoff voting. Requiring a majority of the votes cast to win, the system enables the voter to rank a preference of candidates with runoff ballots tallied without voters having to make a return trip to the polls. If no candidate gets a majority, the person with the fewest votes gets eliminated and those votes are scanned for their second choices. The process is repeated until a majority is achieved.
The system is already in practice in San Francisco mayoral elections, for mayoral and city council elections in Oakland, Calif., and Ferndale, Mich., for city council in Cambridge, Mass., and for all statewide offices in Vermont. It guarantees that the most preferred candidate among all voters will win rather than someone of minority interest who gets the most votes because several others have splintered the vote.
This would be especially helpful in Onondaga County if the South Beech Party mobilizes the Westcott Nation or everyone votes their Birthday Party if it falls on Election Day.
Posted by syracusegreens at August 31, 2005 02:24 AM