Vote on Tuesday – if you can
The Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan is notorious for having written in November 2012 that she believed Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney was going to win the election based on the number of yard signs she had seen and “vibes.”
It turned out, however, that the number of yard signs and “vibes” were not a reliable indicator of how the election was going to play out, since incumbent Barack Obama won the popular vote by a 4% margin and carried the Electoral College handily.
However, with Pennsylvania’s primary election coming up Tuesday, yard signs and “vibes” might well offer a hint of the interest level voters have in the proceedings. And, right now, there are few yard signs to be seen anywhere and vibes of any kind are, well, hard to detect. Perhaps that shouldn’t be surprising – turnout in primary elections is typically about 27% of registered voters, and with few local incumbents facing challengers and the Democratic and Republican parties already having chosen their presidential nominees, odds are you will not encounter any long lines at polling places in Washington, Greene or Fayette counties.
Still, it’s important to vote and make your voice heard in any election, from the presidency down to the local school board. So, if you haven’t voted already, take the time to cast a ballot on Tuesday.
A lingering frustration for many is the fact that Pennsylvania is one of just nine states that still has closed primaries. That means that only registered partisans of the two major parties will be able to vote Tuesday. This will leave the more than 1 million voters in the commonwealth who are registered as independents twiddling their thumbs on the sidelines.
Independent voters are the fastest-growing segment of Pennsylvania’s voting population, and there’s no valid reason they should be left out of the conversation. Efforts to open Pennsylvania’s primaries have been going on for years, but no legislation has ever made it as far as a governor’s desk. And speaking of governors, last year Pennsylvania’s five living former governors all signed a letter urging that the commonwealth have open primaries. Tom Ridge, Mark Schweiker, Ed Rendell, Tom Corbett and Tom Wolf said that they had pledged “to govern on behalf of all Pennsylvanians – Democrats, Republicans and independents, those who voted for us, and those who voted against us. But our political system has changed over the last decade or two.”
The former governors continued, “Primary elections are often decided by a few more extreme voters. Candidates elected by those more extreme voters don’t have as much incentive to engage in the compromise and give and take that is so essential to effective governing. Adding independent voters to the primary mix will help.”
With open primaries having overwhelming support among voters, it’s probably something that will happen one day. Let’s just hope it’s sooner rather than later.