ACHTUNG: This is not a “fair and balanced” story. It is an editorial by the editor.
Yes indeed, friends, politics makes strange bedfellows.
Despite the Republican State Legislature’s passage of a law to outlaw straight-ticket voting and Attorney General Bill Schuette’s desperate efforts to make it stick, voters in the Nov. 8 general election will be permitted to vote their party’s line up and down the ballot.
Though many Democrats are rejoicing at the news the U.S. Supreme Court won’t hear Schuette’s last-minute appeal, some are saddened. I speak of 72nd District Democratic Party candidate for State Representative Steve Shoemaker, who stood to benefit from ticket splitting.
Shoemaker acknowledged not long ago that one of the reasons he finally decided to “take the plunge” into the political arena was passage of a state law that insists all citizens select candidates one by one rather than just mark the straight-party option at the top of ballot.
In these parts of Michigan, particularly in neighboring Ottawa County, a large percentage of voters go straight Republican. This habit has caused a lot of Democrats to refrain from running for office because they’d just get clobbered by the GOP elephant stampede and the ease of filling in just one circle.
Shoemaker said he had been asked by Allegan County Dems to run for many years, but his reply was that it is futile to take on the machine. The trail of tears is littered with so many who have gone before and failed to even get 40% of the vote.
Most recently, retired judge David Gernant couldn’t reach that threshold, even though he was running against a Republican Party racked by the Gamrat-Courser scandal.
Shoemaker this past spring concluded that this might be the best year to give it a shot. He believed the straight-party voting ban would be in effect, thanks to the GOP-controlled Legislature. He thought Gov. Rick Snyder’s awful handling of the Flint water crisis would help him. He saw so much anger over state inaction on roads and often called out current State Rep. Ken Yonker on the issue, telling him Republicans have just about owned state government for the last 20 years, but couldn’t agree on fixing roads badly in need of repair.
So the increase in ability of voters to split their tickets made sense to him as improving his chances as a Democrat. But a court ruling shot down the GOP’s new law and despite the attorney general’s frantic appeals, straight ticket voting will be in place once again in Michigan, one of only 10 states in which it remains legal.
Democrats rejoiced at the news because, as adroitly pointed out by journalist Julie Mack of Kalamazoo, 30% of Dems vote straight party, 19% of Republicans do as well, and about half of voters split their tickets.
And Dems argued that the GOP just wants to solidify its stronghold on elections in Michigan by making it more difficult for poor people, the riff-raff and people of color to go to the polls and make their choices on election day.
Yes, friends, politics makes strange bedfellows. Though Shoemaker agrees with his party on what the Republicans are doing, he had to be rooting on a personal level for their new law to be enacted.