Delaware's poor electoral trend

Is there a better way to enhance primary turnout?

A couple weeks ago I received another missive from the Caesar Rodney Institute, this time written by former elected official Charlie Copeland. (Before my time in the state, he served as the Senate Minority Leader.) Among the colorful charts and graphs he showed as part of his report, Copeland bemoaned the failure of the state GOP to keep pace with the Democrats insofar as voter registration was concerned, adding that the DEGOP is now nearly third in total numbers: well behind the Democrats, but quickly losing ground to the “no party” unaffiliated crowd.

But while there is no threat to the two major political parties that they will be replaced by another political party, more and more voters in Delaware are indeed choosing to register as "No Party." The loser in this shift seems to have been the Republican Party. There are now over 171,000 voters registered as "No Party" - just 20,856 voters short of the Republican Party total of 211,623. This ~20,000 voter gap has remained stable for the last five years.

I think there’s a typo in the original and Charlie meant 191,000 unaffiliated voters. As he concludes, he’s open-minded to a change he once opposed.

Perhaps it is time for the General Assembly to review the "Primary Election" process and make changes to increase voter participation in those determinative elections. For years, I opposed "open Primaries," but as elections get more and more partisan and local turnout remains poor, it is time to re-evaluate the nature of primary elections in Delaware to provide real voter choice and, therefore, participation.

As one of those outsiders, I can certainly live with that. I’ve never voted in a Delaware primary, and there are two key reasons for that: one is that the process is limited to Democrats and Republicans, of which I am neither, and secondly, the deadline for switching parties to participate in a primary is absurdly early, even before the filing deadline. I would have liked to participate in a Republican primary a couple times, but I found out there was an interesting race way too late to do something about it.

But the idea of open primaries deserves comment. When I was active in Maryland, we had this same sort of discussion, but only among Republicans. Apparently the Democrats liked the status quo and had no interest in playing along, so the idea pretty much died. (I seem to recall being told the 2000 GOP primary in Maryland went like that, and to no one’s surprise John McCain won it.)

The way the system works in Delaware is that only two parties have a public primary: the Democrats and the Republicans. If you are a member of the other ballot-eligible parties, I believe their candidates are selected in a state convention open only to party members. The Republicans have their own state convention, but they simply gather to endorse a candidate - an endorsement that’s quite often ignored by the party rank-and-file that’s more conservative and/or populist than its leadership.

If the primaries were opened up to those who are unaffiliated or in parties without ballot access, such as the current Constitution Party’s lot in Delaware, then it would most likely moderate the results. In 2010, an open primary may have elected Mike Castle to be the GOP Senate nominee over Christine O’Donnell. In 2020 we may have advanced Jim DeMartino instead of Lauren Witzke for Senate and who knows how the GOP governor’s primary may have shaken out - perhaps the more known quantity of Colin Bonini would have again prevailed. This goes with Copeland’s theory that fewer “extremists” would be elected in an open primary.

The biggest problem I see in open primaries, though, is that they’re often paired with the concept of a “jungle primary.” Surely Democrats would love a jungle primary given their wide registration lead, since they could split their 60% of the vote and get the top two spots in a fractured field. If not, they would close ranks in the general and win anyway.

What I would prefer in that case is a primary without party affiliation listed. When I went to the polls last November I had a ballot laid out like a spreadsheet: Democrats in one column, Republicans in the next, and the minor parties farther over. But what if it were names and a brief summary of their positions instead?

Imagine if you will, a screen with a short 250-word issue summary. Here’s an example, pretending I was running for the legislature:

Michael Swartz believes the most important job of government is to protect your rights. He also believes that less is more when it comes to government: the less government there is, the more freedom you have - freedom to live your lives, find prosperous employment, and the opportunity to educate your children as you see fit.

Michael would stand in the breech to protect job creators from overzealous regulators by demanding the legislature do its job and not just shove it off to nameless, faceless regulators who are insulated from the chaos they create. And with the oversight tasked to the legislature, they can do their job in streamlining government by eliminating the fraud and waste that seems to be rampant in Dover. In the realm of government, the states have a specific job to do as the level of government that’s closer to the people than those inside the Beltway. We know your local concerns, and one task Michael would assist with is tailoring the functions of government with the needs of the district.

I talked about government protecting rights: that doesn’t mean imposing their whims on the rest of us. In this great country, we have the right to bear arms, the right to worship freely, and other inalienable rights we need to maintain. I thank you for reading this and ask for your vote.

I actually could have used a few more words, but you get the idea. Imagine having these descriptions at the ballot box - sure, there will still be people who vote strictly on name recognition and the major parties will also do their best to maintain power by endorsing slates of candidates, but this could also backfire if you can find out what they stand for in a thumbnail like this. This would be good for a primary or a general election.

I would love to have 100% turnout for our elections, but that also assumes all 100% are informed voters. Too many of our voters just show up and vote for the one with the best 30-second commercial, which automatically rewards a great fundraiser rather than the best candidate. Let’s do better in Delaware.