We had us an election here in Kentucky on Tuesday, one of them primary things. At the ripe old age of seventeen, it was glaringly obvious to me that neither party gave a flying fuck for me and mine, so when it came time for registering to vote independent was the box that got checked under 'party affiliation.' "You'll never get to vote in a primary!" was my father's exasperated response, which will now get to live with "Driving isn't like your video games!" on the Okay Boomer list.
Kentucky has what are called closed primaries, meaning you're only able to vote in the primaries for the party you're registered with, effectively shutting out independents from voting in anything but the general election. Had been the case for me, casting a ballot in every single general election since my 18th birthday, but nary a single a primary. That all changed on Tuesday, thanks to a law passed over the governor's veto two years ago by the GOP supermajority in the General Assembly making Louisville Metro races such as for mayor and Metro Council nonpartisan.
The law was widely viewed here as an underhanded attempt to meddle in the elections of one of the few places in the state that consistently votes for Democrats by wide margins. However nefarious the motivations behind the law, in practice it seems to be proving anything but. Will have to wait a few more years to see how it plays before we can say for certain, but as it stands now it appears to have weakened the local Democratic establishment's ability to 'manage' who is on the ballot in November without paying much of anything in the way of dividends for the party that passed the law.
If anything, it's the people that have benefitted, or at least the ones that can't afford to own their own politician. Weird how that goes hand in hand with weakened party control. Never did quite figure what purpose political parties served other than to control thought and people. Giant political peer pressure clubs. Any of y'all found a good use for them?
My ballot on Tuesday had exactly one race for me to cast a vote in, the nonpartisan elections only applied to city races, was still froze out of having a say in the race to replace Ol' Murder Turtle, Mitch McConnell. When the governor vetoed the bill that made Louisville's races nonpartisan (the veto was later overridden), he made the point that if the bill's sponsors were truly interested in good governance, they'd make all races in the state nonpartisan but we're currently in no danger of that happening.
There was one other nonpartisan thing going on this week, the Bridge Brigade of Sharp Objects 502 was out over the interstate the evening before the election with the message "This Is Your Sign To Vote!" Seemed like one of the more popular messages that the brigade has ziptied to the bridge for an hour, but surprisingly there were still some middle fingers and thumbs down spotted. Freedumb!
Should probably sign off on that note.
