Editorial: No place for partisanship

In a recent editorial I stated, “Thank our lucky stars that our local races are nonpartisan.”

The ink had barely dried on that issue of the I-T, when I received a campaign flyer, in which the Democratic Party endorsed Rachel Hundley as the Democrats’ candidate in Sonoma.

While I agree that Hundley is an excellent candidate, I’d like political parties to butt out of our local races. It is bad enough that partisan politics has rendered Washington D.C. dysfunctional. Please leave Sonoma alone.

Polls show that most voters are weary of political parties, their ceaseless negative campaigning and the gridlock they bring to our state and national governance.

More than 90 percent of state and national elections are decided during primaries in noncompetitive districts. In most states, you must be a member of a party and can only vote for candidates within your registered party. The net effect is that less than 10 percent of voters decide elections.

In California, 23 percent of registered voters have no party preference. California is one of a few states in which there is a “Decline to State” option to register, but the two major political parties still write most of the rules that control elections. The exercise of that control is not in the interest of representative government.

A new poll by Gallup report states, “Half of major party voters feel their party doesn’t offer adequate choices.” It is why the turnout of voters in our elections is so low and why so many Americans have lost faith in their state and national government.

But there are people who want to fix that, and they are not affiliated with any political party.

Check out the following two websites: IVN.US (Independent Voter Network) and its affiliated organization, endpartisanship.org.

On IVN’s website, I found the following statement: “Being independent is a mindset, not an ideology. It does not mean that you lack an ideology. It does not mean that you don’t have libertarian, socialistic, conservative or liberal tendencies. Being independent means that you don’t believe so stridently in a perfect philosophy that everyone who doesn’t agree with you must be an idiot … or evil … or brainwashed.

“Being independent means you are grown up enough to think for yourself. You are confident enough to allow others to speak. And you are humble enough to think you might learn from someone.”

I couldn’t agree more.