Today, Tuesday, December 9, 2025, the
Arizona Daily Star/Tucson.com published a letter,
""When the state chooses your party," by Richard Grayson:
In Communist East Germany, the government simply assigned people to political parties. It was a quiet but powerful way to control political life: the state decided who you were.
Arizona shouldn’t be doing anything that even faintly resembles that history. Yet Secretary of State Adrian Fontes has said he will automatically reassign nearly 47,000 No Labels voters to the Arizona Independent Party becauses of the wishes of a new party chairman, without any formal input from those who chose to register with the No Labels Party. Fontes's office says people who don't like it can “just change it back.” But political identity is a fundamental right, not a clerical detail. Forcing voters into a party whose beliefs they may not share undermines voluntary political association.
No democracy should ever let the government choose a citizen’s party for them.
Richard Grayson
No comments:
Post a Comment