No-party adherents are told to pick one

Rhonda Bodfield Arizona Daily Star
Tuesday, June 28, 2011 12:00 am

For independent voters who shun political parties, recent notices from the city clerk telling them they must pick a party by July 16 if they want to vote in the upcoming city primary election have touched off a bit of confusion.

As independent voters like Wayne Guerrini said in response to the notice, he doesn't belong to a party because he doesn't like any of them, but now he's being forced to chose one.

The confusion, in part, is a byproduct of the city's first "all-mail" election on Aug. 30.

There is no independent primary. But since 1998, independents have been able to vote in the various party primaries. They just have to pick which one they want to vote in.

For an all-mail election, the notice telling them to pick a party is the equivalent of walking into a polling place and telling the poll worker which party's primary you want to vote in.

But due to the way this particular election is playing out, even selecting which ballot you want requires a bit of strategy.

• If you choose the Democratic ballot, there will be one choice in the mayor's race - attorney Jonathan Rothschild.

Political analysts like to hypothesize about the energy a particular campaign has based on how many people are so jazzed about a candidate they have to vote for him or her regardless of whether there's actually a contested race. It's something candidates and their campaign staffs fret about, just because they fret about everything in a race. But in normal terms, it just doesn't mean very much.

Democrats in Ward 1 will have a City Council primary race.

• If you choose the Republican ballot, there won't be any names on it, since the two prospective candidates were removed for failing to obtain the sufficient number of signatures.

Republican leaders, however, say they hope to mount a write-in campaign to ensure they have a candidate on the general-election ballot. So you could go that route, and hope the GOP finds a credible write-in candidate to vote for. Write-in candidates must register by July 21, five days after the deadline to request your ballot.

• Those who choose the Green Party will have an actual choice for mayor between two candidates - Mary DeCamp and David Croteau. It's a tiny party locally, but it's the only actual race.

City Clerk Roger Randolph said that of the 69,000 requests sent out to independents, about 7,800 already have been returned.

If that sounds paltry, it's actually not bad. In 2009, only 3 percent of independent voters requested early ballots in the city primary. Already, we're at 11 percent.

Historically, primary turnouts are low - the last mayoral primary saw 12.6 percent - but this will be the first to test an all-mail election.

Tom Volgy, a political science professor and a former Tucson mayor himself, said the primary will be an interesting gauge of voter behavior.

"Voting is really an emotional act, not a rational act," he said, explaining that one person's vote is rarely the one that decides a race. "But it's hard to generate emotions when there isn't a contest."

He said voters may vote anyway, despite the lack of hot races, because ballots will show up in the mail. That eliminates the step of having to find polling places, especially since they're often merged in the primaries.

Although ballots will be coming by mail, there will be one polling place open in each ward, Randolph said.

Independents who want to pick a side can either return the postcard they received earlier or call the clerk's office at 791-4213.

Contact reporter Rhonda Bodfield at rbodfield@azstarnet.com or 573-4243.

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