Open letter to the Joint Corporations Committee

Dear Senators and Representatives,

Partisanship is creating more problems in the Cowboy State than it is solving. Wyomingites are increasingly seeing one another through the narrow lens of Democrat or Republican, rather than as neighbors with a shared responsibility to our home. This partisan polarization is caustic to our Wyoming way of life.

Sadly, Wyoming’s laws enable and encourage this division, to the detriment of our common purpose and sense of community.

Those same laws effectively disenfranchise many thousands of eligible Wyoming voters who do not belong to one of the major parties. Some 25,000 of our fellow citizens are precluded from voting in our primary elections — elections that almost invariably decide who holds office in our state — simply because they are independent of party affiliation.

In a small state such as ours, where independence of thought and action are treasured values, this flaw in our election code begs to be corrected, and independent voices deserve to be heard at every stage of the election process.

Recent controversies regarding the filling of vacancies in elected offices also call into question our statutory procedures. I will submit to you that a vacant seat belongs to the people of Wyoming, and not to the party of the former occupant. Rather than rely upon internal party apparatus to forward names for a replacement, special elections should be held in these instances. Voters do not need a political party to interpret their will; they are fully capable of doing that themselves in the voting booth.

The term “political party” occurs nowhere in either our federal or state constitutions. Parties are simply private membership organizations, no different than service or fraternal clubs. Yet Title 22, our election code, imbues parties with an inordinate level of influence over Wyoming’s political life. Recent history tells us that this influence is being used to benefit the parties alone, and not the entire state.

Your committee is uniquely positioned to place political power back in the hands of Wyoming voters, instead of in the hands of private interests. I would encourage you to act to do precisely that.

I say that fully appreciating that each of you, to a greater or lesser extent, owes your political success to your party, and that it will require selfless political courage for you to act against your party’s wishes.

When it comes to political courage, I respectfully offer you the words of CBS correspondent Edward R. Murrow. (And we’ll all tip our Stetsons when his name is mentioned.) When asked why he would risk his career by exposing powerful Sen. Joseph McCarthy and his hyper-partisan demagoguery during that dangerous time in American history, Murrow answered simply: “We are not descended from fearful people.”

With all of that in mind, I urge your committee to put a stop to the partisan whiplash that is giving Wyoming a pain in our political neck. Open our primary elections to each and every registered voter, regardless of party affiliation. Place the responsibility for filling vacant seats directly in the hands of Wyoming voters. Eliminate any language in our election code that binds the sovereign state of Wyoming to private political organizations.

The parties will probably cry like gutshot geese if you do this now, but it will ultimately be to their advantage. They can finally operate in any manner that they choose, free of government interference. I think that they will eventually thank you.

And Wyoming voters will breathe sighs of gratitude and relief that they can finally speak directly to their government without their views being filtered through party dogma.

Elected representatives will enjoy a closer bond with the citizens when they pay more attention to what the people want than to what the parties want. Governance in the Cowboy State will improve to everyone’s benefit.

Elections are the heartbeat and lifeblood of our democracy, my friends. You have within your grasp an opportunity to ensure that voting is open to every eligible citizen in our state, and not constrained and constricted by private membership groups. I wish you the best during your deliberations in Lander, and if you decide to follow this course of action, please know that I and multitudes of your constituents stand ready to help.

Sincerely,
Rod Miller