Straight-ticket device
from Ballot-Access News (Richard Winger):
Texas Bill to Abolish Straight-Ticket Device
December 2nd, 2006
Texas State Senator Jeff Wentworth (R-San Antonio) has introduced SB134, to abolish the straight-ticket device [on the Texas ballot].
Please contact your state senators to encourage them to co-sponsor or vote for this legislation. The straight-ticket line currently encourages laziness by voters and is a boon to the major parties, who can count on a certain number of straight-ticket votes every election. Independent candidates do not have a straight-ticket option. Polls have shown that its use by most voters is declining anyway.
Find your State Senator here:
http://www.fyi.legis.state.tx.us/
The people that vote straight ticket would most likely would go down and vote for all of the candidates of that party anyway. Most people voting don’t know enough about the races for lesser positions such as judicial positions, so they vote based on party. Straight-Ticket just makes it easier, and likely encourages more voting and less voter error.
Their aren’t enough independent candidates to justify a straight-ticket option for independents.
However, I know a lot of people who wouldn’t vote in races such as Ag Commissioner because they don’t know anything about the two people running or what that office does.
The other thing we need done is remove the party affiliations from the listings. That way you cannot tell the difference between two candidates unless you LOOK at them and take time to research (aka educate yourself). I would like to see this as a combination one two punch.
This may not change much, but it is definitely a starting point.
Let’s get this bill passed!!
Voters should vote for people, not parties. When I don’t know about the candidates in a particular race, I simply leave that part of the ballot blank.
I don’t know if straight-ticket encourages more voting. More isn’t always better.
Cody, I don’t think getting rid of party affiliations on the ballot very realistic. We are part of a minority of voters that take the time to educate ourselves, most people don’t. Few voters know anything about any of the candidates except for the ones at the top of the ballot. If you got rid of the party affiliations on the ballot, you would just end up with a competition between the parties to get voting guides to their voters saying which candidate is in which party.
I know that in races I don’t know much about, I’m going to vote Democratic because that candidate will much more likely match my ideology. I try to get informed but it’s not always possible to be very informed on every race.
First of all Broken Ballot and Timothy, thanks for coming here and voicing your opinions. You are always welcome here. Timothy, if you’d like to start writing journals here, we’d encourage it. In my opinion, we independents don’t only vote for independent candidates, we vote for the best person for the job be republican or democrat. Though we probably would be more inclined to vote for independent candidates when they do appear, I would hope we don’t affiliate with any party or person just because they belong to a specific group. I’m looking into some pros and cons about straight ticket voting and will get back to you guys later. Thanks for posting Broken Ballot. Keep them coming.
Of course, with any of these bills, we’d have to insure that there was language to define what constitutes a “completed ballot”. It would be pointless to eliminate the sraight party option, and then determine that ballots that weren’t completed (i.e. where voters didn’t or wouldn’t vote for the balloted candidates) wouldn’t be certified. The language would need to be broad enough to preclude voter fraud, and allow for situations where a voter chose to vote for only one or perhaps a few races, or simply one or a few candidates.
As for the lesser known races, particularly Judges, I recall several years ago, while doing some advocacy work for childrens and fathers rights organizations, we ran up against massive resistance from Dallas Family Court Judges, who didn’t want their names listed on the ballots as “Family Court Judge” (ultimately, they just went with “Judge So-and-So of the 3xxth. District Court etc…). Why? Perhaps because Texas is notorious for corrupt Judges, and a child support bureaucracy that garners Half a billion dollars? Or maybe it’s just because Texas (at that time) lead the nation in the number of child abuse, neglect and death cases. Fortunately, mass anger against Republicans turned out a bunch of Dallas Judges ( they even skipped work the following day in a snit!). IMOH, no one should be allowed to remain sitting as an elected Judge long enough to warrant a state pension or to build the sort of fiefdom’s that were extant in Dallas for several decades. No Judge should be allowed to run for office twice, unopposed! To Quote reknowned Texas Wiseman Kinky Friedman “Never re-elect anybody”! Amen!
Ed,
Currently (and SB134 bill would not change this), no ballots are considered ‘incomplete.’ In fact, many voters, myself included, do not vote in all races listed on the ballot, whether for lack of information on all the candidates, dissatisfaction with the choice(s) presented, or other reasons. You are not obligated to vote in every race.
Pass this bill!! Bug your senators and representatives until they pass this bill and also the same day voter registration law. We can also bug our elected officials to introduce and pass a bill enabling internet voting (security safeguards can be established). This will reach out to those who did not vote. This will increase voter turnout (really they just vote at home). This will help us to vote in independents at all levels of government so we can get rid of the TASS tests (among many other needed things)–which Kinky wanted to do.