If you are an independent voter in Colorado, you aren’t eligible to participate in our state caucuses next Tuesday. Only registered Democrats and Republicans will have their voices heard in this first step toward selecting our next president.
It’s a good policy. I say this, even though it excludes about one-third of our state’s registered voters, and even though it provides strong incentive for me to maintain membership in a political party whose policies have infuriated me over the past several years.
I’m a political moderate, and like many Americans, neither political party is a good fit for me. I believe in balanced budgets, separation of church and state, personal responsibility, privacy and civil rights, robust state and local governments, and having a strong military but using it in rare circumstances. I admire leaders who respect others and are able to forge compromise.
Those of us in the center of the political spectrum need to stop our complaining about some of the extreme policy positions of the Republicans and Democrats and join one of those parties in an effort to move them toward the center.
Being a Democrat or Republican will allow you to participate in Colorado’s caucuses. Rather than being part of the shifting group of unaffiliated voters that political candidates only pay attention to every two to four years, join a party and make your priorities something they keep in mind every day.
Once you’re a member of a political party, volunteer your time to help moderate candidates win office. As a college student, I went to Claremont, N.H., for a month and volunteered for the presidential campaign of a moderate Democrat, Sen. Paul Simon of Illinois, who I thought could help move the Democratic Party closer to the political center. I stuffed and licked envelopes, waved campaign posters beside busy intersections, knocked on hundreds of doors and called as many registered voters.
I’ve worked on many campaigns for politically moderate candidates in the 20 years since, because volunteering makes an impact on politics far greater than the solitary act of voting.
Today, I’m an unhappy Republican hoping my participation in my precinct caucus will help move the GOP back to the center. For me, and probably for many moderate Republicans, the decision to remain in the GOP is a little bit like deciding stay in an unhealthy marriage: Your partner’s spending habits are out of control; he’s become a bully and has damaged the family’s reputation; and he’s found religion, but he uses it to condemn rather than help those in need. There’s an understandable temptation to leave the political marriage and become an independent. Or cheat (join the Democrats), in order to make your partner realize he needs to change his behavior to keep you.
But political parties, like many marriages, benefit from people staying and working hard to improve them, rather than giving up and leaving. Just like leaving a marriage, people who leave the political parties risk ceding a good measure of control over their children’s future to somebody else. In politics, independents vote but rarely govern.
It is unfair for unaffiliated voters to sit on the sidelines and complain that the people who actually play the game, the Democrats and Republicans, never get anything done. Independent voters who want to see less bickering between the parties should join the parties and make them deal with moderate views within their own ranks. Within a political party, there is an attempt to be civil to one another and to find areas of agreement. By the time the general election rolls around, the time for civility has passed.
Hold your noses, and give membership in the Democrat or Republican Party a try. The parties and their candidates will move closer to your liking if you do.
Jackie Avner of Highlands Ranch (jackie.avner@gmail.com) is a full-time mother of three young children.
