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Straight-party ticket voting needs to go

In the days leading up to Monday, when the state’s new fiscal year begins, there will surely be the usual brinksmanship and grandstanding that comes any time politicians are tasked with doing anything important, especially agreeing to the state’s yearly spending plan.

But one proposal that has come up in this year’s budget negotiation process that we can get behind is the elimination of straight-party ticket voting.

Far too often, people who decide to vote in an election despite barely paying any attention leading up to it just fill in the Democrat or Republican oval under the straight-party section and call it a day. But as anyone who has kept tabs on the candidates can tell you, not all Republicans or Democrats are created equal. And, sometimes (gasp!), people who belong to one party may actually like the other party’s candidate better!

It can also be somewhat confusing as some may mistakenly believe that straight-party ticket voting is the only way one can vote.

Those are major reasons why we are supportive of this proposal.

If straight-party ticket voting is eliminated, then people will actually have to take the time to realize exactly who is receiving their vote. What a terrible shame that would be, right?

Now, if we had our druthers, we’d also like to see all party identifiers removed from the ballot because, even if straight-party ticket voting goes away, far too many people will choose to vote for party instead of actual people. But any step that makes voters put a little thought into who they are choosing is an improvement in our eyes.

And the arguments we’ve heard that ending straight-party ticket voting would somehow disenfranchise certain voters or help certain political parties seem tenuous to us. If the people are already there voting, how much more difficult is it to make them fill out more than one bubble or press more than one button?

Far too many voters these days have fallen into the trap that elections and politics are like team sports. People are expected to declare allegiance to either the “red team” or the “blue team” and then blindly support the party’s candidates no matter what against the “evil forces” on the other side who are “trying to destroy our country.” Straight-party ticket voting only serves to reinforce this misguided notion.

How about we instead encourage people to think independently and vote for the person they feel is best for the job?

It’s clear to us that our political system needs a refresher to get out of the constant cycle of “us vs. them.”

And there’s no better way to do that than put more focus on the candidates and less on which letter happens to be next to their name.

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