No. 37, “I’ll be back,” The Terminator, 1984.

Political activist Scott Brannon said he wasn’t surprised to see a quick end to proposed legislation that would have given independent voters the opportunity to vote in Arizona’s presidential preference elections.

“We’re disappointed, but we’re not surprised,” said Brannon, co-chairman of the newly formed Grand Canyon Independent Voters association.

Arizona treats its presidential preference elections as closed elections – only Democrats can vote in the Democratic election, while only Republicans can vote in the Republican election. Theoretically, the same is true with the Libertarian and Green parties, though Libertarians didn’t conduct a presidential preference election in Arizona this year, and the Greens weren’t recognized as an official party until after the Feb. 5 polling date.

A bill that would have opened the presidential preference elections to independent passed the Senate, but it was gutted in the House. To use the American Film Institute’s No. 50 entry on its list most famous American movie quote, “Houston, we have a problem,” from Apollo 13, in 1995.

The Independent Voters argue that opening the system, as other states have, would give more voters the opportunity to participate in the candidate selection process.

Opponents argue that opening the system would allow for political skullduggery. They suggest that an organized group of voters from one party could cross over on Election Day and vote for the other party’s worst candidate, thereby easing the path to the White House for their own party’s top candidate.

Brannon doesn’t buy that argument, at least when it comes to registered independent, who comprise 27 percent of Arizona’s voter base.

“We understand there is some risk for foul play to sway an election, but when it comes to independents, we’re independents,” he said. That brings to mind No. 11 on the list of most famous movie quotes, “What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate,” from Cool Hand Luke, in 1967.

One way to move forward may be to allow registered independent voters to participate in any political party’s presidential preference election, but to restrict registered party members to their own parties’ elections, Brannon said. For that matter, the parties could work independently of each other. If one or two or three of the official parties allowed independents to vote in their presidential preference elections, those parties’ candidates could expect to collect a fair number of independents’ votes during general elections.

In the meantime, the Independent Voters association will push for a change to existing law.

“That’s why we organized and we’ll continue to build our coalition,” Brannon said. “We hope for a different outcome next session. We’re in for a long fight on this.”

They have time. The next presidential preference elections won’t be held until 2012, which brings to mind No. 31, “After all, tomorrow’s another day,” from Gone With the Wind, in 1939.

And if you’ve dropped into this conversation late and have no idea why it’s sprinkled with famous movie quotes, this earlier blog entry explains what’s going on.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 16th, 2008 at 11:18 am and is filed under The donkeys, The elephants, The indies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.