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Tennessee’s Major Party Chairpersons On Closing Tennessee’s Primary Elections

By Kleinheider Posted on February 15, 2009 at 3:01 pm

Humphrey has the words straight from the donkey’s and elephant’s mouth on the effort being spearheaded by Rep. Debra Maggart:

State Democratic Chairman Chip Forrester says that, despite the controversies, he sees “no compelling reason” to change the system.

Only a “fairly small percentage of voters crossover on a regular basis,” he said, and there is “defacto registration” in most cases now when a voter chooses a primary.

Further, Forrester said that some areas of the state are so strongly tilted to one party or the other - the Democrats, for example, in Davidson County, and Republicans in parts of East Tennessee - that many elections are decided as a practical matter in the primary.

“Do you sort of disenfranchise someone from participating in the process, like a Republican who wanted to select a certain kind of Democrat as his congressman in Davidson County?” said Forrester.

State Republican Chairman Robin Smith said she has not definitively decided to embrace party registration, but is sympathetic to the idea in a state where “a lot of conservative Democrats feel they no longer have a home in the Democratic party.”

“Relative to some activity we’ve seen, there is a growing demand among grassroots Republicans to have pure or more pure primary,” she said.

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Comments

5 Responses to “Tennessee’s Major Party Chairpersons On Closing Tennessee’s Primary Elections”

  1. JaStep writes
    February 15th, 2009 3:35 pm

    “Do you sort of disenfranchise someone from participating in the process, like a Republican who wanted to select a certain kind of Democrat as his congressman in Davidson County?” said Forrester.

    Chip Forrester is an unbelievable hypocrite. This man stole an election from Rosalind Kurtia because he said Republicans came over and voted in the Democratic Primary — WHEN THERE WAS NO REPUBLICAN PRIMARY FOR THAT STATE SENATE SEAT. No Republican ran, so if someone wanted to vote for their next state senator, they had to vote in the Democratic Primary.

    Tell us, Forrester, why was it okay to disenfranchise those votes - about 10,000 of them - when you threw out their votes, but now you say you can’t disenfranchise voters moving forward?

  2. Harrison writes
    February 15th, 2009 5:34 pm

    We’re seeing the same kind of clear-as-mud logic that we saw from Chip when he tried to explain away his pay cut. The answer to not having partisan registration is that it runs counter to Tennessee’s historically independent-minded voting culture. People don’t like being told to vote Democrat or Republican any more than they like Chip calling them a racist because they didn’t vote for Obama. Fact is, Chip is terrified about partisan registration. He’s exactly the kind of weird party chair who would actually cause a voter to say to himself, “If that’s what being a Democrat is about, where do I sign on to the Republican party?”

  3. Donna Locke writes
    February 15th, 2009 5:58 pm

    Being open to some ideas in each major party, I couldn’t advocate or support party registration, though I understand and am sympathetic to the reasoning behind the push. If we had party registration, then fairness would dictate more and easier ballot access for third-party and other candidates, access which our legislature has gone to lengths to stifle.

  4. Heatseeker writes
    February 15th, 2009 8:47 pm

    I’ll say again. If we go to party registration, then the parties should pay for the primaries. If the taxpayers pay, we should be able to vote in whatever primary we damn well please.

  5. Eleanor A writes
    February 16th, 2009 11:21 am

    Well, at this point the Dems simply nullify whichever primary elections they don’t like (Kurita), so what difference does it make?

    I suppose we should be grateful they “allow” us to hold primaries at all, considering the inconvenient results said elections sometimes produce…

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