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- Jan 27, 2013
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- Toronto, Ontario, Canada
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- Conservative
This just came up in another thread. I live in an open primary state (Texas). That simply means you don't register as a party member and you can vote in either the Dem or the Repub primary election (not both, of course). I think it's a good thing (although it is a little scary how many people don't understand it here and still think they're registered with a party just by voting in that primary) but I guess the argument against it is that people from the "other side" could all vote in your primary to try to get a candidate nominated that has less of a chance against the guy from that "other side".
What do you think?
Working on poll
Personally, I believe the more open the political process, the better it is for both candidates and the electorate.
I envy Americans in that regard. Here in Canada, the party picks their leader and often the leader decides who the candidates will be in some ridings/districts and can veto any person who wants to seek a nomination if he/she doesn't meet the leader's perceived candidate qualifications. In addition, the ridings/districts select their candidate in closed meetings of party members only and since very few citizens are members of a party very few people choose candidates and often a savvy candidate will buy up a lot of new memberships in order to feather his/her vote count.
When the election comes, we don't get to vote for who will be Prime Minister - the party chooses - we just get to vote for the candidate running for the party that our preferred choice of Prime Minister represents. So we often either have to choose a candidate we don't want in order to hopefully get the Prime Minister we want or we choose a candidate we want and hope that doesn't give us a Prime Minister we don't want.
Don't ever begrudge the utter chaos, street fight like openness of your political process - it's what democracy should be all about and it's great to see it in action. In Canada, a Cantor wouldn't ever have been challenged let alone have lost his party's nomination.