Washington, D.C.'s Mayor Fenty and the Board of Elections

We are just a few weeks from the primary elections in the Washington, D.C. area. Last week the local news ran stories about Mayor Adrian Fenty petitioning the D.C. Board of Elections to allow 72,000 non-registered or independent voters to vote in the Democratic primary. This seems to be a silly thing to do. Clearly a party primary is held to allowed the members of its party to choose a candidate that will represent them in the general election. Why would anyone want voters not registered to the party to vote in the election. Some state and/or jurisdictions allowed people not registered with a party to vote in a part primary in the past and it was always a disaster for the party. This would allow members of the opposing party to vote in droves for the weakest candidate giving their candidate a better chance in the general election.

There are two reasons Mayor Fenty has done this. First, it looks like it will be a tight race. There are strong issues and the voting public does not support him on all of them. The mayor would like to have larger numbers voting for a better chance of success. The second issue, and probably the one that is really on his mind, is the uniqueness of Washington, D.C. politics. The city's voting public is so overwhelmingly Democratic that the winner of the Democratic primary is very likely to be the winner of the general election.

On August 12 of this year the D.C. Board of Elections passed an emergency rule to make it clear how things would be handled. The rule stated that all voters that planned to vote in the D.C. Democratic primary on September 14 must be registered as a member of the Democratic party no later than August 16. The mayor claimed that the board's rule would disenfranchise voters that chose not to be affiliated with a party. I know the mayor knows better. It is a primary and if people want to vote in the party's primary they should register as a member of the party. He can court the independent vote from now to the general election, but a primary is a primary; even if it is in a one party town.

Maybe those 72,000 voters should get together and put up their own candidate. It would be nice to see two viable parties in the city of Washington, D.C. for change. It is bad enough that the city still has be bow to the federal government on decisions and its citizens pay federal taxes without having a voting member in congress; they should at least participate in the two party system and the second party does not have to be republican.

In addition to the local news, information for this article came from the Washington Examiner at

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/local/blogs/capital-land/
elections-board-denies-fenty-request-to-expand-primary-voter-pool
-101472479.html.