On Why I Re-Registered To Vote - As A Democratic Party Member
Yesterday, for the first time in my life, I registered to vote while checking the “Democratic Party” as a political affiliation.
Why would I do such a thing?
Previously I had been registered here in California under “no party”, i.e., an independent.
As background - in the past 8 Presidential elections I have voted for the GOP candidates 5 times, for an independent candidate once (no, not Perot), and skipped voting for President twice. So I’ve never voted for a (D) as President. My votes for lower offices have roughly followed the same ratio, though on occasion I have voted for a (D) for a lesser political office.
I live in a Republican dominated district - my Representative is Duncan Hunter the Junior. Hunter has attempted to be even more conservative than his father and has embraced some of the Paulian beliefs. Yet one candidate alone wouldn’t have been enough for me to re-register - I would just skip voting for Hunter in November.
The driving force for me was seeing how the GOP on the whole has abandoned reality for absurdity and hate.
My current governor, for whom I’ve voted, is a Republican but he is one of the few Republicans on the national stage who will not bow to the Tea Partying populism of the idiots. His time is drawing near and he is clearly in the minority in the GOP.
In San Diego county the balance between registered Republicans and Democrats is very close. I may be only one voter, but I want to add my name to the list of those in San Diego county who wish to make the GOP the second party here, something that happened very briefly in 2008 when the Obama campaign was able to register enough voters to have the Democratic Party take the lead locally in numbers of registered voters. However, that was brief and by this year the numbers had swung back to the GOP.
Frankly, I think I could work more with the local Democratic Party than I could ever with the local GOP. There will be Democratic Party candidates for whom I will not vote - I never vote a straight ticket. Yet as uninspiring (or even downright poor) some candidates on the (D) ticket may be, at least the party philosophy is not one of backwards looking, hate-filled revanchists, which is what the Republican party has become.