ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, June 11, 1996 TAG: 9606110027
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
THE ELECTION today is to select the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate. But under Virginia's elections laws, it isn't for Republicans only; any registered voter can take part.
Those laws should be changed.
Primaries, not conventions, should be the method for nominating major-party candidates in all elections, at least for nonlocal offices. Primaries shouldn't be held sporadically to serve the special agendas of party officials - or, as with today's election, when an incumbent calls for a primary in the belief it will be to his or her advantage. Primaries ought to be mandatory and routine - for the convenience of the electorate.
They also should be held on the same day for both parties. That way, voters could take part in only one party's primary. There would be no need to require formal registration by party.
Absent such sensible election laws, alas, Virginians must decide for themselves today whether they even should go to the polls. How they decide could well determine the outcome of the contest between incumbent John Warner and challenger James Miller for the right to face Democratic nominee Mark Warner in the November general election.
Miller's strength is among social conservatives and (many but not all) GOP activists. John Warner depends on votes from a wider swath of the public: more moderate Republicans, independents and Democrats. If turnout is light, Miller is thought to have a good chance to upend the incumbent. If turnover is heavier, Warner stands a better chance of winning.
A low turnout is not automatically to be deplored - if, that is, it reflects not mere apathy but honorable decisions by independents and Democrats not to insert themselves into a Republican primary.
But many non-Republicans may feel a civic duty to vote, regardless of party affiliation, when the rules allow. This, too, can be an honorable position: in effect, maximizing the leverage of one's democratic right and responsibility within the existing system.
For Republicans, of course, the obligation to vote today is clearer. But what defines a Republican?
A political party exists on a continuum between trying to define itself sharply and trying to broaden support, especially within the political middle. No party can or should be all things to all people. At the moment, though, this hardly seems a danger for Virginia Republicans. Warner's Senate voting record, for example, would never be confused with that of a Democrat; opposition to his renomination is based not on policy disputes, but on his refusal to support a couple of the more peculiar GOP nominations of the recent past.
The greater danger at the moment lies at the other end of the continuum, in the notion held by some in the Virginia GOP that the party should be like a private club, distanced from even Republican holders of elected office, and zealous in enforcing allegiance on virtually every issue.
Surely the Virginia GOP consists of more than the few thousand activists who attend party meetings and conventions. And, surely, anyone with an interest in preserving wholesome two-party competition in Virginia needs to worry about a primary in which a good number of party officials are hoping for low turnout.
By encouraging broader public participation in party politics, a coherently organized system of primaries would help keep both parties in better health.
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