The
Rational Argumentator
Chairman, Maine Republican Party
Sent via e-mail to Webster@MaineGOP.com
February 12, 2012
Dear Mr. Webster:
As a registered Republican in the State of Nevada and an individual who deeply respects the founding principles of the United States, I write to you to express my profound disappointment at the decision of the Maine Republican Party not to count the votes from 16.3% of the precincts at the Maine Caucuses – precincts whose caucuses were delayed as a result of inclement weather, which should not be used as a reason to disenfranchise the Republican voters of Washington county and others of the 98 precincts that have not had the opportunity to hold caucuses yet.
Your party’s decision not to count these votes was made public just as the results of the Presidential Preference Straw Poll had been announced. This article from USA Today attributed to you a statement “that any caucus results that come in after Saturday wouldn't be counted no matter how close the vote.” I understand that you were likely merely communicating a decision made more generally in the upper echelons of your organization, so I do not intend to cast personal aspersions upon you for this decision. However, I urge you to use your influence and authority as Chairman of the Maine Republican Party to encourage – or, better yet, simply declare – that decision to be reversed and the votes to be counted once the remaining caucuses are held on February 18, 2012. In the meantime, I urge the Maine Republican Party to withdraw any decision as to the identity of the “winner” of the caucuses.
I recognize that the Presidential Preference Straw Poll is not binding in terms of selecting the delegates which Maine will send to the Republican National Convention. However, it is still significant to the extent that it is a focus of widespread media coverage and can therefore affect public perception of which candidates’ campaigns have gained or lost momentum. Therefore, it is vitally important that any straw poll be conducted to reflect the actual preferences of voters – in accordance with the principles of justice, individual liberty of conscience, and procedural fairness that underlie the American representative republic. It is disenfranchisement to declare that some votes will not count, when the voters who cast them were recognized beforehand to have the same right to vote as others whose votes did count. The voters who are being ignored are registered Republicans who have supported your party – with the reasonable expectation that they would have input in its most important electoral functions!
I will confess to you that I am a strong supporter of Ron Paul for President. In light of the fact that a mere 194 votes separate Ron Paul’s totals from those of Mitt Romney, I find it particularly irresponsible to ignore 98 of Maine’s 600 precincts, when the votes in those precincts could possibly sway the outcome if counted. But this is a larger issue, and it is not limited to supporters of Ron Paul. It is a matter of principles that ought to be generally respected by all Americans – irrespective of which candidate, if any, they support. If those principles fall, our republic shall fall with them.
We live in a representative republic, not an oligarchy. In a representative republic, the people have the right to choose the composition of their government. To have votes count for some of the people, some of the time, at the discretion of authoritative figures such as the leadership of the Maine Republican Party, is an abrogation of these principles. If the people’s voices matter only when it is agreeable or convenient to a select few, then that is the same as the people’s voices not mattering at all. In a true representative republic, one cannot pick and choose which votes of the people are to have an effect, and which are not. If all electoral outcomes are not respected – if any select group has the power to discard votes – then no outcome is truly respected or can truly steer the country away from a course deemed desirable by a small elite.
Some may reply to my argument that the Republican Party is not a government, but a private entity, and, as such, may set its own rules. But this prerogative is justly constrained by the function of the Republican Party as a mechanism of bringing candidates into public office. The Republican Party’s very purpose, after all, is political and governmental. Therefore, it cannot be considered to have the same liberty to determine any processes it wishes, in the way a private individual or a fully private, consensually run business might have. Rather, because the Republican Party, de facto, controls about half of the federal, state, and local government positions in the United States, it ought to bind itself and be bound to adhere to the principles without which a just American government cannot survive. The principle of the people truly being able to choose their government through a representative process is inextricable from the American republican system – and a party that takes for itself the name of this republic should know this.
I honestly cannot say what the outcome of the Presidential Preference Straw Poll would be if the remaining precincts are allowed to hold their caucuses and to have their votes count. If the candidates’ relative rankings remain unchanged and Mitt Romney remains the winner, then I will certainly respect that outcome even if I would personally prefer a different result. But such fair play must go both ways. The Maine Republican Party should allow the remaining precincts to be counted – come what may – and, if Ron Paul wins, should respect that outcome as well. This is the only way for your organization to avoid the public perception that it has foisted a candidate upon an unwilling public and has misrepresented the will of its loyal constituents.
I sincerely hope that you and your colleagues in the Maine Republican Party will make the right decision and steer away from the dangerous course of disenfranchisement.
Sincerely,
Gennady Stolyarov II, CPCU, ARe, ARC, AIS, AIE
Editor-in-Chief, The Rational Argumentator