Published: August 03, 2008 03:43 pm            

Why is Oklahoma a closed primary?

Oklahoma needs open primaries.

This was even more evident to me after speaking with some of my fellow voters Tuesday.

After one man revealed to me that he voted for Kevin Evans for state Senator, I was somewhat amused and somewhat concerned when he told me why he voted for Evans.

“My wife told me to,” he said.

I was happy to learn that there was such a thing as a compliant husband.

But when the man went on to explain that he actually voted on behalf of his wife who wanted to vote for Evans but couldn’t because she was a registered Democrat, I wasn’t so happy.

I was upset because our election system didn’t allow for his wife’s vote to count the way she wanted it to count.

Later I met with another voter who admitted that she also doesn’t vote strictly by party.

“I vote for the man,” the woman said, noting that even though she was a Republican, she would have rather voted for one of the candidates on the Democratic ballot for sheriff’s nominee.

“I wish we had that opportunity in our primary, but they force us to vote party,” she said.

This got me thinking. We don’t have to vote party in general elections, so why are we forced to vote party in the primaries?

It seems to violate the fundamental purpose of voting.

Last time I checked the United Sates was a democracy, “a government of the people, by the people, for the people.”

So shouldn’t all voters have the opportunity to vote for the people they want?

Why should only the Republican voters in Woodward County District No. 2 get to decide who their next county commissioner is just because both candidates were Republican?

The commissioner who the Republicans voted in will be deciding policy that will affect Democrats and Independents just as much as it will affect his fellow Republicans.

So why shouldn’t the Democrats and Independents get to have their say? Isn’t the government here to serve them too?

Independents have it the worst though.

At one polling place I witnessed as two Independents changed their registration so that they could at least have some say during the next primary, even if it is a limited or restricted say.

But just because these women’s political views did not fall within the little Republican or Democratic check boxes on their voter registration forms, they couldn’t vote Tuesday.

So much for trying to think outside the box.

And so much for trying to have their say inside the ballot box.

It seems to me that we need a 28th amendment that reads “The rights of citizens of the United Sates to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of political affiliation.” With a subsection stating that “This goes for primaries as well as general elections.”



Rowynn Ricks is a staff writer for the Woodward News.

        

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