Health & Fitness
Unaffiliated Shouldn't Mean Powerless!
A call to organize Tolland's unaffiliated voters.
Connecticut leads most states in its very high numbers of unaffiliated voters - statewide, 42% of us register to vote but decline to choose a party affiliation. Tolland outdoes most of Connecticut with a whopping 50% unaffiliated registration... which is heartening to those of us tired of partisan bickering and gamesmanship, but sobering when you realize it means half of the voters in our town have no coherent voice or representation.
With an important special election coming up on June 11th and registered voters evenly divided between Democrat (27%) and Republican (23%), the campaigns are hunting and wooing us genuine independents to tip the balance their direction, to support their candidate and their issues.
We can do better! While independent parties can and frequently are formed to back a narrowly appealing candidate, referendum or slate, few achieve any real power and most are as prone to the deficiencies of being a political party as the Big Two themselves.
We don't need to isolate ourselves in a powerless niche to form a collective voice! We should be able to retain our right to vote independently on all issues and not have it assumed that we stand for one or another platform. We should be able to remain unaffiliated - truly independent - and still form both a collective body to be informed and a collective voice (or even multiple collective voices) to be heard.
This isn't a call to form another political party. This is a call to all unaffiliated voters in Tolland who want to be better informed on political and town issues and be able to organize a self-directed collective voice behind positions they think are important.
If you're interested in being a part of this early exploration stage, you can make your comments here, drop me a note at TUVL@NitroPress.com to be added to a contact list (or to express any private thoughts you might have), and stay tuned to this blog.
Let's change the bitter, divided political community here into one that means something for all Tolland residents, especially the supermajority of us who don't break issues down into "blue" or "red" simplicity!
