Party animals

A grim portent hung over President Barack Obama’s victory Tuesday—the prospect of another four years of partisan gridlock and brinksmanship. It was easy for newscasters to find voters forlorn about partisanship. But many of the individuals chose to vote straight party on Tuesday, and in doing so endorsed the same system they decry.

North Carolina is one of 15 states that has a straight-party voting option on its ballot. North Carolina’s particular variant of the straight party option excludes the presidential candidates, which means that some voters mistakenly fail to vote for president. In fact, North Carolina usually suffers from “undervoting,” when the number of ballots cast for president meaningfully trails the total number of ballots cast.

It is easy enough to see straight party voting as a crutch for uninformed, dogmatic and ideologically driven voters. A straight party option removes the (admittedly trivial) disincentive against uninformed voting—the hassle of checking a lot of boxes instead of a few and the psychic discomfort of uninformedly voting for a single party when that option is no longer recommended by the ballot itself.

This is particularly true of local elections, where candidates running under a party label have usually not been vetted by the party and are not well known by the electorate. One infamous case involved Steve Mansfeld, who was elected in 1994 to serve on the Texas state criminal court and, after serving six years, went on to become a security guard. That straight-party voting can help elect congeries of unvetted future security guards does not speak in its favor.

But these points require careful handling. Making rational decisions at the polling station can be very difficult, if not impossible. A genuinely informed decision would require sophisticated economic knowledge, subtle foreign policy know-how and information about municipal political structures and controversies. Few voters can stand up to the tribunal of required information.

Political parties, which are supposed to unite candidates who share a common vision for the future, address this information deficit. In fact, party affiliation can be so telling that some electoral processes, like the one used to elect the German federal legislature, elect part of the legislature based solely on the electorates’ party preferences, independent of their preferences for particular representatives. Uninformed voting along party lines is better than plain old uninformed voting. And, even though local politics can diverge from national party platforms, party labels still have meaning in local contexts.

We admit ambivalence about this issue, although we do believe that North Carolina should eliminate the straight party option on its ballot. The upshot of the option is small. It encourages uninformed voters to vote using the little information they have—party affiliation—and helps them to do it quickly. This upshot is slight enough to justify the option’s elimination.

But keep in mind that the downsides to straight party voting are trivial too. Any ballot which indicates party affiliation will encourage partisan politics, and getting rid of a straight party check box will not solve that problem. Perhaps, given the role of political parties, it is not a problem we want to solve. But it is the real problem.