Georgians should be singing the primary blues

From the Marietta Daily Journal
Sunday, July 23, 2006

By: Bill Shipp

Looking for a model of democracy you can show off to the world? You have come to the wrong place. Steer clear of Georgia.

An ideal democracy, the Peach State is not. In fact, we're not even close. As democracies go, Georgia rates about a C-minus, on a good day.

Georgia's just-past primary election is a perfect example of a democratic process gone awry. The Georgia primary looked like an election that tinhorn dictators would stage in Central America or that mad mullahs would attempt in the Middle East. In any other part of the world, after such a debacle, U.N. troops would be stationed at polling places.

Just look at this mess we call a primary election:

The July 18 primary was designed to chill voter participation. Its designers ought to celebrate. Just over 400,000 voters cast ballots in each party primary. Georgia has more than 4.2 million registered voters and 6 million voter-age residents. That means only a tiny, tiny fraction of the voter-eligible population participated. Georgia already has the lowest voter-turnout percentage in the nation.

Our elected leaders deliberately schedule the primary in midsummer. The heat index rises out of sight. No sensible voter wants to venture outside. Half the population is on vacation. The original purpose of the hot-weather primary was to protect incumbent officeholders.

Hot-weather voting seems to create lethargy among potential insurgents. That plan has certainly worked well. Primary challengers are relative rarities. Something else has happened too. The primary has attracted a plethora of plainly nutty candidates. Some of them win because primary voters also tend to be on the eccentric side. To be candid, the primary does not attract anything close to an accurate cross-section of voters.

The primary as well as the general election is a confusing tangle of new faces and freshly configured jurisdictions. Our elected lawmakers are continuously redrawing districts for legislators, members of congress, county commissioners, school board members, etc. The names and district numbers change with every election cycle. As a result, voters are constantly baffled by strange names and new district shapes. Our founding fathers envisioned implementing reapportionment only once every 10 years. Our modern-day General Assembly apparently never heard of the founding fathers.

Gov. Sonny Perdue and his band have set out to make voting at polling places as complicated as possible. At the same time, they want to simplify voting by mail. Absentee voters (mostly Republicans) need no special ID and no valid excuse for not voting in person. Under the Perdue plan, only dummies (many of them Democrats) who dare go to real polling places would have to prove their identities with official photographs. There is little evidence of Georgia voters falsely identifying themselves in person.

Both federal and state courts finally suspended the law because it was patently discriminatory. Even so, stories abound of poll officials demanding picture IDs during last week's primary. Small wonder that Georgia was singled out in Congress as a prime example of why the federal Voting Rights Act needs to be extended.Most of the evils of the present primary system were initiated by white Democrats intent on maintaining power as long as possible. For decades, Democrats saw reform-minded Republicans as a menace to "our way of life." When the GOP finally gained power, Republicans discarded the reform mantle and took up where the Democrats left off. Maybe that is because the new-order Republicans are, in fact, mostly former Democrats.

Reform-minded Republicans went out of style a long time ago.

Postscript: A couple of weeks ago, we said the primary results might tell us whether the Democratic Party of Georgia is still viable. The message turned out to be less than clear.

True, Democrats polled only 480,000 votes. However, they attracted more voters than the Republicans did. Some Democratic leaders told us that the Democratic turnout might have been even greater, but many usually loyal Democrats decided to vote in the GOP primary just to oppose Ralph Reed.

In winning the 2006 nomination for governor, Mark Taylor outpolled Gov. Roy Barnes in the 1998 primary. Taylor undoubtedly sees a favorable omen in that 60,000-vote margin over Barnes' showing. Barnes went on to win the 1998 election.

On the Republican side, Ralph Reed ran well in south Georgia, winning numerous counties across the Coastal Plain. His undoing occurred in metro Atlanta. Casey Cagle clobbered Reed in Fulton, Cobb, Gwinnett, Clayton and DeKalb counties. Reed lost those metro-Atlanta counties by a collective margin of 20,000 votes.

You can reach Bill Shipp at P.O. Box 440755, Kennesaw, GA 30160, or e-mail: shipp1@bellsouth.net