By far, one of the most disheartening aspects of elections in recent decades in the the US is the parties' demand for wholesale acceptance by their members of specified candidates and/or issues; California used to exclude Independent voters from most of the primary election processes at the behest of the two major parties; if you were an Independent, you could not vote for your preference if the choice were from either major party; this has changed in recent years, with open primaries for almost all positions now being the norm; at one time, in order to be able to have at least some voice in the choosing of candidates, I had to register with one of the major parties; since the DEMs pretty much run CA, I opted to register for their party, although I still exercised my own free will and voted many times against the party line on issues and voted for persons outside of the party...
Oh, and when I say the DEMs pretty much run CA, the voter registration stats for the state tell the story; as of Feb 2021, the state voter registrations breakdown as 46.2% DEM, 24.1% GOP, 6.0% other parties; the encouraging sign is 23.7% have registered as fully Independent...
In the debate over the continuing GOP efforts to enact laws to suppress voting by those they deem as not fit to vote, there was one person who made a very keen observation about the whole situation; I don't remember the persons name, but the comments he made stuck with me; he said it is a sad state of affairs when a political part can declare, without cause or evidence, an election was illegal, just because they lost, and, in America, it is the right of the voters to choose the politicians to represent them, not for the politicians to choose who will vote for them...
<O>
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