{"id":2997,"date":"2012-03-20T20:51:12","date_gmt":"2012-03-21T01:51:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/?p=2997"},"modified":"2012-03-20T20:58:27","modified_gmt":"2012-03-21T01:58:27","slug":"bill-to-require-voters-to-register-by-party-goes-nowhere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/2012\/03\/20\/bill-to-require-voters-to-register-by-party-goes-nowhere\/","title":{"rendered":"Bill requiring voters to register by party goes nowhere"},"content":{"rendered":"

The SC House Judiciary Committee today debated a bill to require voters to register by party to vote in party primaries. The SC Progressive Network<\/a> opposed it, arguing it posed an unnecessary impediment to voting rights. South Carolina has more legislators chosen by primary than any other state.<\/p>\n

Enough Republicans on the committee had concerns about limiting voters’ options in primaries — which are paid for by all taxpayers — to send the bill back to subcommittee, making it unlikely the bill will pass this session.<\/p>\n

Network Director Brett Bursey pointed out to the committee that 20 of its 25 members had no opposition in the general election and they won their seat in the primary. This applies to both Republicans and Democrats; see memo below.<\/p>\n

A majority of the committee members won 99 percent of the vote in their uncontested general elections.<\/p>\n

“Sixty-five percent of South Carolina voters had only one candidate to vote for in the last general election for legislators,” Bursey said. “If you can’t vote in the primary, you don’t have a voice on who represents you in the State House.”<\/strong><\/p>\n

Due to partisan redistricting over the past 30 years, South Carolina has the least competitive general elections in the nation. The creation of \u201csafe\u201d legislative districts resulted in 80 of the states 124 House districts (65 percent) having only one major party candidate on the general election ballot. In these 80 races, the voters only opportunity to cast a meaningful ballot was in the primary.<\/p>\n

As long as the majority of elections for the legislature are decided in the primaries, all voters must be afforded the opportunity to participate in open primaries. Until our general elections are competitive, restricting participation in the primaries effectively prohibits citizens from casting a meaningful vote for their representative.<\/p>\n

Twenty of the 25 members of the House Judiciary Committee had no major party opposition in the 2010 general election. These members took office by winning their party\u2019s primary, often with no opposition.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

House Judiciary members with general election opposition (with percentage of general election vote)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nanny 66% R
\nBannister 75% R
\nQuinn 72% R
\nPeter McCoy 47% R (Anne Peterson Hutto 43%, Eugene Platt 8%)
\nLeon Stavinakis 55% D<\/p>\n

House Judiciary members with NO general election opposition (with percentage of general election vote)<\/strong>
\nJames Harrison 99% R
\nAlan Clemmons 99% R
\nGeorge Hern 99% R
\nJenny Horne 99% R
\nDan Hamilton 87.92% R
\nKarl Allen 99% D
\nDerham Cole, Jr. 99% R
\nEddie Tallon 99% R
\nWalton McCloud 98% D
\nGreg Delleney 99% R
\nBoyd Brown 98% D
\nDavid Weeks 99% D
\nLaurie Slade Funderburk 99% D
\nThad Viers 99% R
\nJames Smith 99% D
\nTodd Rutherford 88% D
\nTom Young 99% R
\nBakari Sellers 99% D
\nSeth Whipper 99% D
\nMike Sottile 99% R<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The SC House Judiciary Committee today debated a bill to require voters to register by party to vote in party primaries. The SC Progressive Network opposed it, arguing it posed an unnecessary impediment to voting rights. South Carolina has more … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,12,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-newscommentary","category-network-newsevents","category-sc-newscommentary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2997"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2997\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3002,"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2997\/revisions\/3002"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}