Posts
As Arizona drowns in red ink, the state Legislature appears to be more ideological than pragmatic in dealing with the myriad problems facing our state. In a state where registered independent voters are the fastest growing political bloc (recently surpassing Democratic voters in numbers), not a single independent serves in the Legislature, and moderates of both major political parties are routinely beaten in primary elections by extreme conservative and liberal candidates.
Is the Arizona electorate as polarized and out of touch with the rest of the country as it seems, or is the moderate middle being disenfranchised by well meaning "reforms" that have had unintended consequences? The following are suggestions (some borrowed from a recent Arizona Town Hall) that could make Arizona's Legislature more pragmatic and less ideological . . .
Mar 8, 2011
AZ: Independents Demand Reform of Legislature
From the Arizona Daily Star:
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
If they moved to the use of 2-seated Hare LR for their state assembly elections, it'd go a ways to improve things. They'd have more middle-of-the-road Democrats and Republicans elected there. There current two-seated system makes it easier for extremist Republicans to be elected in strongly gerrymandered districts where the major parties have two candidates each and folks have to vote twice and typically do so along partisan lines.
dlw
But I'd take its language about polarization w. a grain of salt, because it's hard to say how different a state's polarization is from other states and it's bad everywhere...
dlw
Post a Comment