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NEWS AND OPINION > PHILLYNOW

It's Not Easy Being Green (Party)

By Daniel Denvir

Add Comment | Comments: 0 | Posted May. 21, 2009

“Green Party, eh? You’ll be the first of the day,” a longhaired guy, who I think was the judge of elections, bellowed. My ankle sprained from an idiotic stair-related injury, I hobbled into the dining room of a new Cedar Park cafe to vote. A line full of registered Democrats turned, incredulous, to look.

The judge then called over to the guy monitoring the machines, “Hey, this guy’s Green Party.” That means that I got to vote on just two ballot questions on Tuesday. Two. Please disregard the rest of the ballot. Most of the emails and fliers that I saw in the lead up neglected to even mention that the DA and judge elections were party primaries and not part of a general election—it was just assumed that Citizen Joe was probably a Democrat.

Normally, I switch my registration to Democrat when it makes electoral sense (like to vote Obama over Hillary last year) and then change back to more accurately reflect my ideological orientation. This year, solely because of flakiness, I missed the re-registration deadline. Something, I thought, is crappy here. But what?

I’m not for so-called “open primaries” that allow anyone to vote in any party’s primary. That would undermine the integrity of political parties by taking away a party’s right to choose their own candidates. And I’m not against political parties; I just think we need to allow more of them a fair shake in our system.

If people felt like it would be politically meaningful to register with the party that best reflected their principles, I bet they’d do so. That means that Dems would lose some of their Left flank—but the Republican Party would probably split between libertarian conspiracy theory Ron Paul types and Christian fundamentalists. In a more just multi-party system, Philly’s minority party city council seats could perhaps go to Greens instead of Republicans.

Just 13 percent of Philly Democrats showed up on Tuesday. Aside from brief injections of youthful vigor, party politics are generally controlled by the same old, rich assholes that’ve always been there (and, by the way, are still giving Obama economic advice). It wouldn’t hurt to make our democracy a little more interesting, a bit more exciting, a lot more democratic.