Let’s back 2 parties and sack straight party voting

“In one-party system you have one party. In two-party system, you have two parties. In multi-party system you have… more than two parties.” — Dr. Sunjook Junn, GVSU political science professor

ACHTUNG: This is not a “fair and balanced” article. It is an editorial by the editor.

I’ve written it often, and I’ll maintain it until the day I shrug off my mortal coil: People will do the right thing if you make it convenient for them to do so.

This applies to that really awful habit in these parts of voting straight ticket. I suppose some vote straight Republican because that’s kind of government they want, but the mindless practice of pushing one lever too often reflects voters’ apathy and intellectual laziness. It’s so much easier to vote this way when the election rules encourage it.

That’s why I’m bringing up once again a proposal to insist all voters to go up and down the ballot to make their choices in all races. They could still vote straight ticket, but this time they’d have to color in each box.

Now I understand that in days gone by it was a hassle to spend too much time casting a ballot, especially with people waiting in line behind you and perhaps not a whole lot of time that can be spent at the polls in just one day every two years.

But in recent years, many of us have taken that bold step forward with implementing of mail-in voting, which enables the voter to take his or her time in the comfort of his or her home. So with time pressures alleviated, more careful examination of the issues and candidates can be exercised.

For too long the two major political parties have encouraged voting straight ticket, not caring a whit about the better option of splitting the ticket. This practice has been at the root of a solid Democratic Detroit and a solid Republican West Michigan.

“We like the way things are around here. Vote straight Republican.”

That reduces everything to an all or nothing system, more insidiously to a one-party system, the kind we abhor when looking at dictatorial governments in other countries. We used to sneer at Russia’s so-called elections in which the current fearless leader was elected by a landslide. Yet we turn a blind eye to it when it occurs in our back yard.

I’ve often written about the tyranny of the undemocratic one-party system, in which sometimes quality candidates are turned away simply because they belong to the “wrong” party.

Not long ago and not far away, there once was a Democrat appointed to the Village Council. She was an attorney and provided free legal advice on occasion. Her Republican colleagues were so impressed they begged her to switch parties and when that failed they personally knocked on doors of village residents to ask them to split their ticket to vote for her. She still lost.

By enabling the continuation of the one-party system we assure the game will continued to be rigged and unfair. And we become the totalitarian system of government we say we don’t have in these United States.

If a law was passed outlawing the ease of straight ticket voting, we’d still provide the majority one-partiers the opportunity to win the elections. It’s just that we’d make it harder and less convenient to do so.