Hillary Clinton
Related: About this forumRegistered independents have no business voting in the New York democratic primary
http://www.dailynewsbin.com/opinion/registered-independents-have-no-business-voting-in-the-new-york-democratic-primary/24530/There has been a lot of attention paid lately to the voting laws in New York. The state holds what are known as closed primaries. This means that you have to have identified yourself as a specific member of a party to vote in their primary. New Yorks deadline for registering to vote in this primary or changing your party affiliation was last October. This doesnt work well for the Sanders supporters, many of whom identify as independents. They have claimed the process is rigged, when in fact it is they who are trying to rig the process. While some states allow same day registration or allow independents to choose a ballot from either party, New York doesnt, nor should they.
The purpose of a primary election is for party members to choose who they want to represent their party in the general election. If you are not a democrat or a republican, you should not be voting in the primary. You should absolutely vote in the general election thats when your voice is to be heard. But to cross parties or show up in a primary to sway the nomination process for a party that you do not want to be identified with is actually rigging the process.
It happens every cycle, in every open primary or caucus state for a variety of reasons. Some independent voters truly do not identify with a particular party, yet there may be a candidate in a specific race that they support and believe in more than any other. That is fine but, again, the primary is not for you unless you are willing to stand up and say Im a democrat or republican.
In some years, when one candidate is running unopposed within his own party (like President Obama in 2008 or President Bush in 2004), you may have a democrat or republican who chooses to participate in the other partys primary for any number of reasons. They want to ensure a quality candidate is chosen (just in case the other party were to actually win), or they may actually want to try to skew the results and torpedo a strong candidate from the other side. Neither are really acceptable reasons. If you dont identify with that party, and you have no intention of voting for that candidate in the general election you should not be voting for them in the primary.
Go Hillary today will be your day......
shenmue
(38,506 posts)It means not open.
Can you do that, Sanders trolls? Can you learn that?
msongs
(67,441 posts)Iamaartist
(3,300 posts)Its elections rules,nobody can break rules that already set in place by law...
griffi94
(3,733 posts)They didn't follow the rules or even bother to learn the rules and now they
want the rules to not apply to them.
I'd bet the reason most of them didn't register to vote is because they weren't interested in voting
until the cool rallies started happening and Bernie became flavor of the month.
If you're not a Democrat you shouldn't vote in our primary.
I don't want our nominee chosen by impulse voters which seem to be a large
percentage of Team Bernie.
Lucinda
(31,170 posts)griffi94
(3,733 posts)I knew some people here in Texas that altho they were hard core Republicans voted in the Democratic primary.
The idea was to make the primary more bruising for the Democrats and to keep the nomination from Hillary
who they saw as the stronger candidate.
Funny thing about that is how much they hate president Obama so whenever they
want to talk about politics now I always tell them what a good job they did helping president Obama
make it to the oval office. That usually dries the political converstaion right up.
Good for you! That will teach them to meddle!
NurseJackie
(42,862 posts)Wishy washy and uninvolved with the party from day one ... suddenly want to participate in party activities?
If they were the least bit involved, they'd know the rules already. Their shock and anger and confusion proves to me that they were never involved as they claim.
Lucinda
(31,170 posts)It was the same a few months ago when people were screaming here about super delegates, and acting as if they were some new shady thing fostered upon poor voters to keep Bernie down. Clear evidence they weren't Dems, and hadn't learned anything about the party they had just joined. Or were pretending to be a part of...