A major problem that I see with American politics is the straight ticket vote. I'm talking about the option at the top of many ballots to indicate weather you want all your votes to go party X or party Y. It often times helps us, but it also helps the Republicans.
So why is it a threat? How can its removal help us? And why is it a good thing to pursue? Well let me muse on this subject a little bit.
The straight ticket vote dissuades some voters from inspecting the rest of their ballot. I'm not saying all, but a few is too much really. These voters, if they look furthur down on the ballot might encounter names they are familiar with, politicians they might not like but are in their party, or 3rd party possibilities they didn't even know existed. Exposure to the rest of the ballot can provide exposure to who the opposition is.
But how will this benefit us? Well, we have two options, national removal of straight ticket voting options and local removal of straight ticket voting options.
The local removal of straight ticket voting can be easily targeted to 'red' states. What happens when republicans have to manually back up their candidates for all offices? A good many will check all the boxes. But for those who only want to vote for president but would normally just check the Republican straight ticket option, could easily forget to vote for their senator or representative. Or even their county auditor or governor. But in order to keep our side from suffering from this we would have to make sure not only get our people to the polls but also to educate them about the need to vote for all the democrats.
The GOTV + Educate the Voter (or GOTVEV) efforts are doubley important in the national case. And that's really where a dynamic all levels democratic party would really shine, assuming we have one at that point.
So the skinny is, remove straight ticke voting and you suddenly change the dynamics of all elections. If we pursue active GOTVEV we have a chance to build long term active voters who vote for democrats in all offices. If the Republicans fail in their efforts to do the same (which since they like the politics of personality which tends to focus ones mind on only one race at at time I don't think would be that effective), we could gain a lasting advantage.
So thoughts, ideas?