Election Eve

On Election Eve 2004, the news is rife with the Ohio Poll Watcher challenge. This is certainly a partisan effort. As such, your moderator identifies four levels of partisanship (in order of our acceptance):

• non-partisan
• anti-partisan
• bi-partisan
• (just plain) partisan.

At State By State, we prefer, NON partisan. It would be nice if partisanship were not necessary to treat us all as equals. To the extent identified earlier by Chomsky, and labeled by the SBS editor, as ANTI partisan, let's be frank, the effort to deny voters in Ohio is frankly partisan. So here, it's appropriate to be anti-partisan and side with the judge who denied the partisans an opportunity to be present in the polling places. As a complete populist (if that's partisan), your moderator (YM) observes the polling places are staffed by dedicated citizens whose spend the whole day certifying people showing up to exercise their civic obligation. In full disclosure, YM will act as a partisan challenger tomorrow, but only as the polls close to collect the results for the party which YM serves as a precinct committee person.

BI-partisan is more objectionable than ANTI-partisan, because it pre-supposes the _two_ party system. As a lifetime confirmandi of one of those parties, it is now well past time to open ballot expression to ideas not well-represented in the BI nature of the American Political System.

(Simply) partisan is the most objectionable mode of behavior here. YM is perfectly willing to invite partisan members, since (s?)he is one such. But, let's face it. Partisanship has at its core preservation of the party. While this is a laudable goal, it's not the necessary goal. YM fully expects the major parties to survive the challenge we pose here, so we needn't be overly partisan. Let's do this: identify the blatant partisanship when and where it occurs, shun it to the extent required by a healthy democratic republic, and work to provide access for more ideas, candidates, and citizens.