COLUMN: Count my vote better said ‘buy my vote’
The founding fathers understood the value of a republic. On the day the Constitution was ratified in Philadelphia, a woman approached Benjamin Franklin and asked “Mr. Franklin, what type of government do we have?” His reply was “We have got a republic, ma’am, if you can keep it.” Utah’s current system of nominating candidates through a convention holds true to the republican form of government created by our founders. Our neighborhood elections – also known as caucuses – conventions, and the republican form of government are being threatened by an initiative movement called Count My Vote, or CMV. Let’s be honest here; count my vote sounds good. Who doesn’t want their vote to count, right? Well, CMV is not what it seems to be. Before we go further, let’s take a look at our current system.
The registered voters in each county are divided into neighborhoods – called precincts – of about a thousand registered voters. Friends, family and neighbors get together once every two years for 1-2 hours to discuss issues and elect their precinct representatives – precinct officers and delegates. Any registered voter can be elected as a delegate. The delegates have the opportunity to meet face-to-face with candidates and elected officials and vote at a convention to decide who will be their political party’s candidate in the upcoming primary and/or general election. No other method of selecting candidates is so close to the voters and keeps elected officials accountable. No other method allows for regular individuals to run for office. You don’t need to be wealthy or famous to be a candidate; campaigns are more about issues than a popularity contest.
So now that the neighborhood elections have been explained, what is CMV? CMV is a ballot being initiative-bankrolled by extremely wealthy individuals and touted as a logical and necessary reform to our current system. CMV would eliminate the neighborhood conventions and replace them with a direct primary system. Primaries require candidates to raise large sums of money, usually from lobbyists and outside special interest groups, to be spent on billboards, junk-mail, radio and television ads and newspapers.
Supporters of CMV say that the neighborhood elections elect extremists. The facts say otherwise. In the 2010 U.S. Senate race, it was the more moderate candidate, Tim Bridgewater, who took 57 percent of the vote from GOP delegates over Mike Lee. It was in the primary that Lee was able to take the majority of the vote and move on to the general election, where he was elected. In 2008, Chris Cannon and Jason Chaffetz went to a primary where Chaffetz defeated the incumbent.
CMV says the current system decreases voter participation. This is false. The neighborhood elections allow for more voter participation, not less. With this system, Utahns’ are able to vote at their neighborhood election, then at their party convention, then in the primary election and finally in the general election. While voter turnout in the primary and general elections has decreased, the turnout in neighborhood elections has greatly increased over the past several years. Caucus night attendance has increased every year since 2006, when 23,000 Utahns attended their neighborhood elections. Last year 125,000 Utahns came out to caucus night to elect their delegates.
The only people who would benefit from CMV are the junk-mail companies, the media and professional political consultants. CMV would be more truthful if it was entitled “buy my vote.” We, the people of Utah, would lose out. Rather than being accountable to the voters of Utah, elected officials would be obligated to the special interest groups who got them elected.
– Andrew is a former news writer for The Utah Statesman and a current member of the USU College Republicans. Send any comments to andypierucci@gmail.com.