Commentary: Despite the handwringing by the Sun-News and the Republican Party, voting a a straight ticket is a useful electoral strategy for many voters and better than their not voting at all.
Some of us may have the time and inclination to study each race carefully; a large percentage of the electorate do not. Should those voters stay home rather than have a role in choosing our future leaders?
Fortunately party labels serve as “brands” that identify for voters — now, perhaps, more than ever — the cluster of values that a candidate will likely embrace if chosen to govern. Even a busy, distracted voter may have a strong preference for a particular approach, and that voter does the community a service by registering that preference on election day.
If Aggie fans had to analyze each player at every position before showing up to root for the team, there would be few fans in the stands on Saturday night. Even well-informed voters approach elections in a similar way, reliably voting for one political team or another whether there’s a straight ticket bubble to fill in or not.
Not allowing voters to choose this approach more directly, through straight ticket voting, arbitrarily limits options for voters rather than expanding them. In this sense, banning straight ticket voting represents its own kind of voter suppression, by insisting that voters need to think about their choices in a certain way in order to participate.
Choosing candidates by party affiliation is a legitimate and rational way to decide who will govern us. And that, after all, is what a democracy is all about.