Voting, Without Parties

Suzy Sandor, with a letter to the editor in today’s NY Times, complains that partisan primaries alienating and disconnected. This is a very strange, disconnected position, one that didn’t make any better sense a when it was on the ballot here in the November elections; while California voters were wise enough to defeat Prop. 62, I’m still not over the 46.2% of voters who cast yes votes. While the current two party system leaves much to be desired in providing quality candidates, allowing anyone to vote in any primary simply deprives the primaries of their actual meaning–to allow the members of a particular party to select their own candidate for a general election. Non-partisan primaries would most likely destroy the parties; if that’s the unstated goal of those behind these efforts, this is the wrong means to get there.