Haduken

Virginia GOP Demands Oath of Fealty

by: midas

Check this out.

Apparently, in order to vote in the Republican primaries in Virginia next year, voters will be required to sign an oath of loyalty to the eventual nominee. You will swear to vote for whichever Republican wins, according to the story.

Sooooo, say you are pro-life. So you vote for Huckabee or something. But then Giuliani wins the nomination. You’ve sworn to vote for him, even though he is pro-choice. Oops.

The Virginia GOP has had a thing for a while about being afraid people are going to sabotage their primaries. Closing them up was an issue in the last gubernatorial election. Now, they (SBE or GOP? I don’t know) just schedule them the same day to make people choose one party or the other. I guess that’s not enough for them, so now they are demanding oaths of fealty, like it’s the middle ages or something. There’s no way to enforce it, besides honor, but seriously WTF.

Comments.

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  1. Actually, it’s not a “loyalty oath” so much as a statement of intent. At the time of your voting, you intend to vote for whoever the nominee might be. And if you’re voting for a guy you probably think he’s got a good chance to win so why would this be a problem? You might really want folks to sign that thing. There is no obligation to hold you to that “intent”, so if you vote for someone and they win (or you intend to vote for whoever does win) and then yo find out something horrible about them, well, you’re not exactly stuck in the process. The idea is to try and keep the Republican primary as Republican as it can be short of the state requiring party registration and closed primaries. The folks most offended by this are either people who aren’t going to vote (Democrats) or who don’t typically vote in Republican Primaries (RINOs or Ron Paul supporters). It’s simply the party exercising it’s right to free association.

    I also think it’s been determined that holding both primaries on the same day violates free association, though exactly how and whether that decision is right (I sometimes imagine things) is something I need to dig up.

    Just my thoughts.

    — Jason | @

  2. I don’t see why you would ever want to discourage anyone from voting, and like it or not, having to sign a statement of intent will.

    Sadly, I think it will discourage the wrong kind of people. If I’m willing to “sabotage” a primary, then signing a piece of paper probably won’t stop me. But honestly, who does that?

    — nic | @

  3. I think that trying to discourage centrists or fringe-partisan members is a bad idea from a strategic standpoint. It makes it more likely that extremists perform well in primaries because more centrist voters are chased away. Since the general election in a 2 party system is typically a race to the center, that doesn’t seem like a good way to put your party into power.

    With that said, I agree with the goal of trying to keep people from voting for the worst candidate of the opposite party to disrupt the election. Maybe if we didn’t have this ridiculous state-by-state partisan primary nominating system in the first place, we wouldn’t have to worry about preventing unintended consequences.

    — Justin | @

  4. i hope they will publish the text of the agreement before election day.

    i guess it depends on your perspective of political parties. like i guess technically they are clubs who should be able to include or exclude anyone they want. but functionally they are pretty much institutions of the government, which would you would hope to be more inclusive.

    so i guess maybe where they fall on that spectrum to someone is prolly the degree to which they are upset about this?

    — midas | @

  5. Wait, Nic, you do that.

    I’ll sign whatever, shoot, I don’t even care. I wonder how practically this works out with the electronic voting systems we use in the City. Does someone accost me before I enter the voting room?

    The GOP of VA is being a huge bummer to me. One of the excellent things about Virginia is our open primaries. Stop effing things up. We all know the Democrats aren’t smart enough to sabotage primaries anyway.

    PS. Ron Paul!!!

    — Ross | @

  6. No dude, I don’t. I remember talking about this before the 2004 primaries, I said I was going to vote Howard Dean because any (R) could beat him. Then you told me that was stupid and I agreed.

    — nic | @

  7. Hahah yes! That does sound like a persuasive argument on my part.

    I’ll be honest, the asking price for my fealty is at a record low these days.

    — Ross | @

  8. Are people still Republican?

    — Susan | @

  9. can i just say that whenever someone (ross) talks about Ron Paul i can’t help but think of Ru Paul.

    — Wolf | @

  10. maybe I’m stupid - but is the Republican party that worried about Virginia now?

    And doesn’t that defeat the purpose of not having to register for a party, and the whole open primary thing?

    Again, maybe I’m stupid…

    And why don’t they put those vote pledges in piles next to abstinence pledges, and drug-free pledges and see how well they actually hold up.

    — Robinitaface | @

  11. sex, drugs, and voting the other way! woooooo!!! ya!!

    — Wolf | @

  12. including the sex and drugs would probably increase turnout.

    — midas | @

  13. This has been dropped / turned off. So I hear.

    http://www.examiner.com/a-1079681~Va__GOP_drops_loyalty_oath_plan.html

    — Ross | @

  14. yay! now they just need to put them on different days so i can get even more “i voted” stickers.

    — midas | @

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