Republican Winner-Take-All States are Disenfranchising Their Voters
On March 15, the Republican Party will allow winner-take-all (WTA) primaries again. The amazing thing is that with several candidates, the winner may not be a majority with 50%, but may be an even much lower plurality. If the top candidate gets 40%, he gets all the delegates, and 60% of the voters are totally disenfranchised. This calculus will discourage backers from contributing to all but the leading candidate, since they will not even get any delegates to take to the convention.
It’s no secret to anybody that the Republicans have been passing state laws and regulations to limit the availability of Democrats and minorities to vote. This starts with putting few voting places in areas with minority voters, making them wait up to five hours in line. Then, in Florida, the head of the state election office was the head of the Republican Party there. States have cut back voting days and voting hours. They have cut out voting day registration. They have taken away the privilege to vote for felons. This year their voting laws requiring driver’s licenses and birth certificates are up before the appeals and the Supreme Court. The conservative Supreme Court has gutted the Voting Rights Act that would have prevented these laws. The Supreme Court wanted the Congress to update the law. The Republican Congress has passed on this. The whole point of this paragraph, is that it is then not surprising that the party that has gotten to think disenfranchisement would set up a primary system that would disenfranchise most of its own well-qualified voters, and its biggest donors.
To the extent that the supposedly self-funded multi-billionaire Donald Trump is not allowing the standard donors to get influence with their donations, and may take some WTA states, this is an amazing destruction of the influence on candidates that was planned by the Citizen’s United ruling on unlimited PAC donations by industries. The irony is that this was brought about by the Republican Party and the Republican state parties that are allowed to determine their own state delegate allocations within the primary times allowed by the national party.
There may be many voters who may not realize until they watch the results at night that they have been disenfranchised of their votes, their campaign efforts, and their campaign contributions by their own party. This may incline some to look for a party with proportional primaries where their votes and efforts will always be rewarded.
