It is lousy, scheming, underhanded tricks like this that further reinforce my belief that the presence of political parties in government has become toxic to the principals of Liberty, Equality and Community.
The political parties are so obsessed with having/keeping power that no means is unsavory enough to be withheld in their pursuit of their selfish ends. The partisans, and without honor, attempt to use the processes of government to usurp the authority of the voting public. Let us consider that if the Republican party in Wisconsin had came out on top during the 2018 midterm elections that they would not be advancing bills that diminish the power of the governor. You can bet that if their dirty trick works other partisans in other states will attempt the same thing. You can be also be assured that if their dirty trick don’t work that they’ll spend a lot of effort coming up with another trick. When they craft another scheme, they’ll employ it.
All of the parties use the functions and processes of government to solidify their hold on power. When the voting public place partisans into public office the partisans will immediately begin to scheme up ways of keeping power, and removing power from the other partisan political bodies. This cycle goes back and forth, each time diminishing the power of We the People. So what to do? The states and parties who control the governments have proven that they can not be trusted with such awesome powers as dictating election law. They have proven by their actions that they will use the machinery of government to take power from you and me if it serves them and their corporate masters.
The thing to do is to remove power from all political parties. To remove power from political parties We the People must register as “No Party”, and do it in mass. We the People must be the ultimate nonpartisans. We the People can give a vote of no confidence in parties by dropping out of them. Abandon them like you would any abusive relationship. Refuse to take the abuse.
We the People should cause all states to have the same elections laws by adopting a System of Uniform Voter & Election Laws (SUVEL). Have all states and territories elections be brought under SUVAL, and increase the authority of the Federal Elections Commission so that they may monitor the states and enforce SUVAL.
One item of extreme importance that should be included in the SUVAL is, all citizens are automatically registered to vote when they reach the age of 18. The political parties would use the government machine to attempt to crush any such change because it would destroy the partisan voter registration system which props up their hold on government. Any attempt to crush an automatic voter registration system being implemented is proof of party contempt for the citizens. It would be further proof of charges made here in previous paragraphs.
If our nation implemented automatic voter registration, all voters would automatically be registered as “No Party” because no government, or person can choose who you associate with. I seriously doubt that once people are automatically registered to vote that they would go the extra step to declare party affiliation so they might vote in a party primary. It would be more likely that the political parties, while they still hold power and before these changes cause their power to diminish much, would clamor for open primaries in all states, and/or attempt to reverse automatic voter registration.
We can not allow the partisan thralls of corporations to withhold power from We the People by the criminal misuse of our governmental systems and processes. We the People must never tolerate political parties, persons, or entities to take our rightful power. The start is, We MUST ALL DROP OUT OF THE POLITICAL PARTIES and be the Ultimate Nonpartisans.