Loving party lines

With the Oregon primaries looming over their shoulders, voters are gearing up to make their pledge. But not everyone can participate in the primary elections or have the option to vote for whomever they wish. Outside of arguments with friends, the primaries are the rare moments when political parties make a difference.

But should it really be that way? I think it should.

On campus, up until recently, there were several people with clipboards offering to register people to vote, update their addresses and change their political parties. Before this election year, I had been unfamiliar with the concept of randomly changing your political party. I knew you could do it, but I had never seen a reason why. But this year, to my surprise, people have been switching from their home parties in order to help their favorite candidates proceed to the next round.

The biggest switches seem to occur between voters of the Independent Party, who wouldn’t get a vote in any primary election in Oregon anyway, and Republicans. What are they switching to? The Democratic Party. With the constant struggle between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, more people want to get in on the action and to have their voice heard.

When it comes down to it, it doesn’t matter in the general election which party you are affiliated with, you get to vote for whomever you think is the best candidate. The question here is whether that’s okay to do in primary elections.

Primary elections are really held so each person belonging to a specific party gets to choose who the party as a whole backs for the presidential nomination. In that way, people of the same party can’t dominate the entire election and people in the same party aren’t competing against each other. The hope seems to be that each party, major or otherwise, should have one representative on the ballot in November.

But, at least in this election year, the system seems to be failing us. The Republicans figured out pretty quickly who their nominee would be. Once one member seemed to be dominating, the other contenders quietly pulled back and gracefully cut their losses. The Democratic Party, however, has refused to pull together and reach one conclusion. This lack of solidarity has led to the inevitability that more than just Democrats want their say in this battle.

In reality, since people are changing their parties in order to participate in their preferred primary, is there a point to having parties at all? Politicians belonging to a set party don’t necessarily follow that party’s apparent platform anyway. When people vote, they should be allowed to vote for a person, not necessarily a party.

Even so, we have parties for a reason. The hope was that one group of people with the same ideas wouldn’t be able to dominate politics. But even that can get out of hand.

It seems that we try to stereotype parties based on what we believe. People have a tendency to believe that Republicans are conservative. Some who believe themselves to be conservative will thus vote Republican, not necessarily paying attention to the candidate, with the assumption that they are voting for people who hold similar ideals, but may or may not be the ideal candidate for them that year.

Although party lines may cross and people may not be satisfied with their own party’s candidates, I think parties are still important. Even supposing some politicians ignore their own party’s platforms or beliefs, parties still help the voters make sure that they might be able to vote for a party they relate to. They also allow other groups of people, outside of the stereotypical parties, the opportunity to get on the ballot.

In that way, if you are registered for a specific party, you can have a say in that party’s nomination for president. If you are not registered for the party you wish to vote for, you can still get your say in the November election, when the country all together selects the next President of the United States.