How about a History Lesson on New York State Politics?

[brooklynite]

You know that Party re-registration deadline that everyone hates? That was progressive legislation.

Unlike most States, New York has had vibrant minority parties for a century. New York State law provided for fusion tallies, so third parties could maintain ballot access (determined by the quadrennial vote for Governor) while "sending a message". Don't think the Democrats are progressive enough? Vote for the American Labor Party, or later the Liberal Party, or later the Working Families Party. Don't think the Republicans are conservative enough? Vote Conservative or Right to Life.

Because these third parties are small in actual registered voters, it was very easy to skew their Primary results by shifting a small amount of voters. Thus, a re-registation deadline that didn't allow an abrupt last-minute shift.

The important point now, is that this rule had been in place for DECADES when Sanders started his campaign. he should have paid attention to the rules in the States he was campaigning in, and planned accordingly. Where was his campaign to re-register voters in the five months since he announced he was running?

[think]

1. It's as progressive as the Third Way. What's not to love about disenfranchising voters....

[Igel]

5. Except that it didn't.

The largest independent party, the Working Family's Party, didn't have a primary. It endorsed Sanders and told its members to GOTV for Sanders.

Separate out three different things:

Those who decide to not belong to a party and to have no say in the party's internal workings.
Those whose voter registrations were changed.
The "125000" voter registrations that were purged in Brooklyn.

The first disenfranchised themselves, as surely as if an American renounces his citizenship or chooses not to vote. They didn't like their choice, made consciously or out of ignorance, and immediately say somebody victimized them. I don't recall if you had to select "no party affiliation" or if you could just fail to select one of the options. Either way, through commission or omission, they victimized themselves. They just don't want to admit that like elections choices have consequences.

The second were wronged likely. Whether by intent or happenstance remains to be seen, and prejudging the situation may be our right but in the long run we're going to remember our prejudging far more than whatever actually caused any registration changes. I'm willing to say that a number of those who claimed to have been wronged just don't remember something they don't want to remember. Memory's malleable, and the greater the desire to misremember the more likely we are to misremember.

The third might be 125 000 voters or it might be 5 000 voters, we don't know and can't know at this point. We know voter registrations with a particular name/address duple were purged, but I fully expect that in Rochester my voter name/address was the result of a similar pre-election purge several years ago. After all, I moved but didn't do what the law required and inform the BOE that I had moved, and I certainly don't expect the BOE to include me as a voter for the next 100 years. It's either purge such voters or let the voter registration rolls climb to 3, 4, 10x the area's population (we've gone ballistic on DU when the # of voter registration exceeded the adult population, again, assuming based on little but ill will that fraud must be involved). Note that those purged can cast affadavit ballots and have those ballots counted under certain conditions--having another voter registration that's valid in the same jurisdiction. So they're also no disenfranchised. I couldn't vote there because I don't live in Rochester any more--my affadavit ballot would be voided. However, if I failed to re-register years ago when I moved from one part of Harris County, TX, to another part I could cast a provisional ballot for state and Harris County elections and have it counted because I'm still in that jurisdiction. All the rest is framing, which counts as "PR," "agitprop," "advertising," "media manipulation," or any of several other options--take your choice of (near) synonyms.

[hobbit709]

2. Tammany Hall-nuff said.

[thesquanderer]

3. a few things...

re: "Where was his campaign to re-register voters in the five months since he announced he was running? "

I don't know whether there was any such outreach then or not (perhaps via social media), but honestly, I have a feeling that even Bernie himself doubted he'd still be in it by the time New York was to vote. And while New York may be about the most extreme example, there were numerous states where party affiliation had to be designated well in advance. And a lot of the people who got excited about Bernie simply didn't do so until well after October.... that was well before any debates, well before any primaries and caucuses, well before he was getting any mainstream coverage. To work on party registration in New York and numerous other states so far ahead of time--especially without any corresponding "organic" publicity to support it so early on--could have been an expensive proposition, and a questionable use of resources. Money isn't unlimited, and resources put toward registering New Yorkers well in advance may have diverted resources from earlier voting states, where different result may have rendered New York moot.

This is similar to the argument about why he didn't put more resources into registering new voters in time for New York's March deadline. After the March 15 primaries, he was largely written off for dead. By the time he had something of a comeback in Wisconsin, it was already past the NY deadline. Should he have put more resources into New York sooner? Would that have hurt him in Wisconsin? For that matter, should he have written off Florida and Ohio to put resources into NY and elsewhere? In hindsight, maybe yes, since he lost those badly... but without knowing how badly they would go, who could have known what would have been best? Monday morning quarterbacking is easy.

As an aside, to your point about, historically, this simply being the way New York works, well, not really. As I understand it, the primary date has changed, but the deadline for party declaration has not. So for example, an October deadline would not have seemed as onerous in 2008 with its primary in early February compared to this year with its primary in mid April.

[Bread and Circus]

4. I have two arguments for that

1.) What protects small parties doesn't and shouldn't really apply to dominant parties that are likely the only two parties at play in a general election. These rules inadvertantly entrenched interests in large parties.

2.) Holding the debate schedule back behind registration dates such as this is evidence of underhanded "rigging" by the DNC in Clinton's favor.

Ultimately though, who gives a shit. Clinton will be the nominee but it was rigged in her favor from the get go.