Published: October 31, 2008 11:01 pm      

Voting party line hurts us all

People who follow politics are obsessed with understanding why folks vote the way they do. Sometimes political allegiances are so strong that people will vote against their own self interests simply because they cannot bring themselves to cross party lines. Others eschew party fealty and resist all overtures by either major party to sway them. Why one person is a rock-ribbed Republican, his brother a blue-dog Democrat and his sister a lukewarm independent is as unfathomable as human nature itself. How to persuade all three to vote for a particular candidate is the challenge we call politics.

This all used to be so easy. A king would make these decisions for us. We peons didn’t need to bother with understanding the subtleties of the international monetary system or solid waste management. The king would take care of it, according to his own priorities. If you didn’t share his priorities, well, you were just wrong. Speak up, and it’d be off with your head.

Then somebody had the bright idea that everyone should be entitled to a say in how things were run. From that point forward, we’ve been under a constant barrage of campaigning for our precious votes.

George Washington lost a 1755 campaign for the Virginia House of Delegates because he didn’t treat prospective supporters to a drink of whiskey from his Mount Vernon distillery. Two years later, he rolled out 144 gallons of refreshment. He won with 307 votes, a return on his investment of better than two votes per gallon. He never lost another campaign.

During Herbert Hoover’s 1928 campaign, Republicans promised a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage. Hoover won, but didn’t fulfill his campaign promises. Voters should have demanded payment in advance of their votes.

Our enlightened consciences would like to think there are more sophisticated reasons for our loyalties today, but that’s probably not the case. People vote the way they do, or don’t vote at all, for a myriad of reasons.

One litmus test is party affiliation. In Oklahoma, Democrats and Republicans make up almost 90 percent of all voters, and many voters decide for whom they’ll vote by party affiliation alone. But what defines someone as a Democrat in Oklahoma may be far removed from being a Democrat in California or Massachusetts; the same is true for Republicans. It’s amazing that we may be the reddest of all states on Tuesday, but all of our individual statewide elected officials are Democrats.

Democrats now outnumber Republicans in Oklahoma County, with a 10 percent surge in registration this year. While Democrats can vote for Republicans in general elections, and vice versa, the fact that new voters are registering as Democrats by a 3-2 margin probably indicates how they are likely to vote.

Unfortunately, voting by party affiliation alone is no guarantee of an informed vote; it can be a crutch as much as an aid.

Obviously voters should become well-informed and make independent decisions rather than relying on such partisan methods. When does loyalty to party control over a well thought-out decision based on the voter’s core beliefs?

Whether and how we vote ultimately reflects our conclusion about which candidate would do the better job in office, regardless of their party affiliation. That calls on voters to talk to candidates, ask questions and expect answers, and invest some time to become informed.

We’d do that much before buying a refrigerator. With so much more at stake, we ought to do as much homework before we vote on Tuesday.

WALTER JENNY JR. is an Edmond resident and secretary of the Oklahoma Democratic Party.