Saturday, November 24, 2018

Time to get rid of straight party voting in Utah

When referring to possible changes to elections I have stated:

"IF they really want to change elections, they should get rid of straight party voting as people can now get on the general election ballot as an unaffiliated candidate with signatures bypassing the political parties, and have been able to for many years. They just have a harder time wining with straight party voting. CMV v2.1 does nothing to help unaffiliated voters. That would."

As far as I can remember I have not voted straight party for an election. That goes back approx. 40 years.

I started promoting getting rid of straight party voting at least by Sep. 2017. See for example the bottom of this post.
http://fredcox4utah.blogspot.com/2017/09/count-my-vote-or-blank-check-vote.html 

When I updated the blog post after CMV amended their proposal it has the same suggestion at the bottom http://fredcox4utah.blogspot.com/2017/11/count-my-vote-or-blank-check-vote.html

When I wrote my op-ed for the Salt Lake Tribune in Feb. 2018, it had the same suggestion.

https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/commentary/2018/02/03/commentary-count-my-vote-would-take-away-accountability-of-elected-officials/

I realized I voted against 2016 HB 119 in committee Feb. 2, 2016, but I was very torn at the time (you can listen to my comments in the committee) have had time to reconsider.

https://le.utah.gov/av/committeeArchive.jsp?mtgID=14061&timelineID=71358

That decision had nothing to do with the 2018 election.