Issue 436 Paying for Political Primaries October 9, 2014

Political primaries are essentially votes to see who is going to run in an election while representing a particular political group.  Hence we have a Republican primary, a Democratic primary, and even a primary for independents and other groups who wish to see their candidates run for a selected office.  But why the heck are these primaries paid for with taxpayer dollars?

Corruption:  The reason these primaries are paid for by our hard earned taxpayer dollars is because of the corrupt nature of the American electoral system (democracy).  This is because those in charge (Democrats and Republicans) can shift money while their members hold office to secure their hold on American politics.  Thus it makes it impossible for another group to hold a political primary unless they can fund it themselves or manipulate the major parties from within, while these main political primaries control all the monitorial resources. So what should be done?

The solution:  As I see it, primaries are by very nature an election amongst members of a club who seek a representative to represent their interests in something else.  In this case a political office.  Hence, while the actual election to fill a political office should be paid for, the primary which selects the candidates should not.  Therefore each the governments in the United States should cut funding toward the political parties.  Remember, the parties themselves are more of a club than anything where people of similar interests gather and talk about politics.  They have more than enough money to run their own primaries without the aid of any government.

Making it cheap:  Before I did say that most of these parties required financial support save the big parties, which is way the two major parties will be unaffected financially save them paying for their own political primaries.  However, the smaller groups involved in politics still need to choose members to run for particular offices.  Thus, why do they not simply give each of their members a number and have them vote online.  There is no need for a brick and mortar voting box for a political primary in the first place as it is a vote amongst members of a club. This ensures that it is cheap and members can be tracked to see how many voted in each area of the country (depending on the office that is to be filled) to identify active and inactive members.  It ensures transparency as well and costs not a single penny with respect to taxpayers.  Heck, it is no longer limited to a single day either which helps insure that everyone within the political party has a chance to vote.  So why not do it this way?

Conclusion:  I have sat as a member of the board of elections time and time again for a political primary.  As such I have seen firsthand the number of people voting in primaries is not worth the thousands and sometimes millions spent to hold them by government.  Primary elections are not even part of the United States Constitution.  At my voting station alone last primary, I had three people of 16 vote in the conservative primary, 14 of 56 vote in the Democratic primary, and 1 out of 3 in the Conservative primary.  I even heard that in some voting areas, they had one single person.  Meanwhile, I was one of six people paid $180 (or more) to sit on my rear end for 16 hours and literally do nothing at all.  Kind of dumb is it not.  A total waste of everyone’s time.  So can we stop this club nonsense and stop wasting taxpayer dollars on a club activity.