Independent Spoilers

Campaigning is over, and during the interregnum between endless campaigning and what will become incessant analysis of the results of the voting, I’d like to raise another issue, the role of undeclared voters, the so-called independents.

Conventional wisdom has it that it’s a great thing that people who register as undeclared can pick up a ballot for either party before they go into the voting booth. I look at them as nothing but uncommitted spoilers. They should be barred from voting in the primaries of either party. What’s wrong with registering for one party or the other, then working to make it better reflect your own views? What’s wrong with folks who can’t abide by the platforms of either party working for a third-party candidate?

There are a lot of problems with our two-party system, but flaws and all, it has worked well for us over the years. The American federal government has been exceptionally stable since it’s founding. And, third-party movements can and do get started here. If Ross Perot weren’t such a kook personally, he might well have created a very viable third party in 1992. (As an aside, why isn’t Representative Ron Paul running as the Libertarian that he is?)

The thing that most bothers me about undeclared voters is that they can and sometimes do, even if they don't do it often, vote for the weakest candidate from one party as a way of trying to help their favored candidate of the other party. There is no way to stop this, and perhaps as they say, all is fair in love and war, and politics. But it’s sleazy.

It’s time for those who are undeclared to come out from under the bushes and either commit to one party or the other, work for a new third-party, or stay out of the process until the general election.