Oz To Parties: Let Everyone Vote

Speaking for Connecticut’s ​“radical middle” majority, Oz Griebel called on Democrats and Republicans to open up their primaries to unaffiliated voters — beginning with the April 28 presidential primaries.

Griebel, who ran a third-party campaign for governor in 2018, is making that call as chair of Connecticut’s chapter of a new national third party called ​“SAM,” or Serve America Movement.

At this point his party is as much about changing electoral laws as about promoting individual candidates.

In Connecticut, now that means a campaign focused on three goals: term limits; ​“ranked-choice voting,” in which voters choose a series of candidates in order of preference; and primaries open to unaffiliated voters.

“Primaries are paid for by all taxpayers. All voters ought to have a chance to participate,” Griebel said during an appearance Monday on WNHH FM’s ​“Dateline New Haven” program.

He noted that the largest bloc of voters in Connecticut is registered as unaffiliated with a party, rather than Democratic or Republican. He argued that they reflect ​“where people are — in the radical middle” between two parties that tend to focus on cutting government (Republicans) or promoting government programs (Democrats) to tackle public challenges.

Connecticut’s Republican leaders briefly supported open primaries in the 1980s as a way to lure more voters. But the party dropped that idea as its two top promoters — former U.S. Sen. and Gov. Lowell Weicker and state GOP chair Thomas D’Amore, who represented the moderate wing— bolted to become independents.

Griebel’s pitch isn’t moving the two parties’ current leadership.

State GOP Chair J.R. Romano argued that open primaries would open the door to manipulation by parties’ opponents who could stack the vote to promote weak nominees.

That would wreak havoc in local elections. What’s to say in a city like Derby, where there’s only 900 Republicans, Democrats can’t switch parties ​“to stop a strong candidate from winning a nomination?” Romano argued in a conversation with the Independent. ​“People can manipulate the system. The Democrats can manipulate the system to get the outcome they want in our primary and vice versa.”

“Democrats vote in Democratic primaries in Connecticut. If unaffiliated voters want to vote in the primary, they are welcome to register as Democrats in person until noon the day before the primary, and if by mail, the application needs to be postmarked by April 23. It’s simple,” state Democratic Chair Nancy Wyman stated in an email.

Griebel argued that parties can already send decoys to register in opponents’ primaries to skew the result. Open primaries would strengthen the parties and promote democracy by giving more people — including those turned off by how the system works now — a say in who ends up running in general elections.

Rank Choices

Griebel received similar resistance in the quest for ranked-choice voting, which is catching on in some parts of the country. Maine is the first and only state so far to adopt the system for federal elections. As of last year nine states had some communities with local ranked-choice elections, including San Francisco and Minneapolis. Another four states included communities that voted to institute the system.

Too often, people end up voting between two candidates they consider the lesser of two evils in general elections, Griebel noted. Ranked-choice gives them the chance to vote for candidates they support — and if they worry about ​“throwing away a vote,” a chance as well to register support for the lesser choice of two top candidates.

Click here or on the above video for details on how ranked-choice works, with multiple rounds of counting until a candidate obtains 50 percent of the vote.

And click here for a previous story about another grassroots campaign seeking to bring ranked choice to the state.

Griebel argued that ranked choice would produce victorious candidates with wider appeal, more civil debate (because candidates might avoid trashing opponents liked by some of their potential voters), and more discussion of issues. In Connecticut that would mean a more serious discussion about unfunded pension liabilities and a broken transportation system, two issues caught in partisan gridlock.

His experience in the 2018 gubernatorial election helped convince him of the need for ranked-choice voting, he said.

“We think you’re the best candidate,” he said many voters told him, ​“but if I vote for you, I worry [Democrat] Ned Lamont … [or Republican] Bob Stefanowski will win.”

Griebel captured 54,741 votes, or 3.89 percent of the total, in his third-party quest.

“The only people who come up with these reforms are losers [who] can’t accept that voters rejected” them under the current system, responded the GOP’s Romano. ​“I’m sorry Oz.”

Wyman was more noncommital: ​“Change is hard, especially in something as fundamental to our democracy as our voting systems. Democrats are always willing to look at ways to modernize and improve the system, but any changes must be undertaken with careful consideration of the impact on access and preservation of rights for all voters.”

Secretary of the State Denise Merrill has expressed more interest in pursuing ranked-choice voting. She introduced a bill last year to study a possible change to that system. The bill passed the state House but died in the Senate.

In testimony before the legislature, Merrill said a study is needed because of possible technical/tabulation challenges and questions about how to deal with cross-endorsements and petitioning candidates. She called ranked choice ​“an interesting concept that would allow voters to rank the candidates based on their preferences, and no vote would be ​‘wasted’ because votes would be reallocated to the voters’ second choices if their first choice candidate finished at the bottom. The system is designed so that no one will be elected with less than 50 percent of the vote.”

Click on the video below to watch the full interview with Oz Griebel on WNHH FM’s ​“Dateline New Haven.”