Virginia's No-Choice Elections - Wash Post

[Virginian]

I was dismayed that I could not vote for a Democrat candidate when John Warner last ran for the Senate. It made me wish we had term limits so that elections didn't consist of choice between "Incumbant or Write-in."

In this letter to the editor, one of our "elected" officials has also been disturbed by this common phenomona in the Old Dominion.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5319-2003Nov21.html


(snip)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5319-2003Nov21.html">Virginia's No-Choice Elections

Sunday, November 23, 2003; Page B08


Supreme Court decisions and congressional legislation have enshrined a right most Americans have come to take for granted: one person, one vote. In the past, state legislatures across the country had created elaborate schemes to concentrate power in rural, mostly white areas so that heavily populated urban areas, where more African Americans lived, would not be able to realize their full political power.

Court rulings and the Voting Rights Act gave us our modern redistricting structure, which was intended to empower voters by giving them a choice of candidates on Election Day. Districts were to be based on population, developed around communities and protective of the rights of minorities.

Unfortunately, Virginia has not lived up to the letter or spirit of these actions. As the Nov. 7 Post editorial "Voting Without a Choice" accurately noted, "Most of the legislative races were hardly more competitive than elections in the old Soviet Union." While the comparison may be overly harsh, there is an element of truth to it. Of this year's 140 legislative races, 80 of the incumbent candidates had the dubious distinction of running as an "unopposed" candidate. I include myself in that 80.

We must have competitive races for a healthy democracy. It is not a healthy democracy when 65 percent of the races do not offer a choice between a Democrat, a Republican or a third-party candidate."

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