{"id":559,"date":"2004-02-01T14:10:41","date_gmt":"2004-02-01T19:10:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wordpress\/2004\/02\/voting_under_oath\/"},"modified":"2004-02-01T14:10:41","modified_gmt":"2004-02-01T19:10:41","slug":"voting_under_oath","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2004\/02\/voting_under_oath\/","title":{"rendered":"Voting under Oath"},"content":{"rendered":"

The South Carolina Democratic Party is requiring that voters declare that they are Democrats<\/a> in order to vote in Tuesdays’ primary.<\/p>\n

Voters who appear at their polling places will be asked to sign an oath swearing that “I consider myself to be a Democrat” before casting their ballots.
\nIf they don\ufffdt sign, they can\ufffdt vote.
\nDemocrats say they don\ufffdt want to keep independents away, but they do hope to deter Republicans from voting in the primary and interfering with the results.
\nThe pledge is legal because the Democratic Party \ufffd not the state Election Commission \ufffd runs and pays for the presidential primary, said Donna Royson, deputy executive director of the Election Commission. South Carolina requires only that voters declare they have participated in just one party\ufffds primary.
\nDemocrats said the national party has required the pledge since 1984 in South Carolina and other states that don\ufffdt require voters to register by party.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Funny, I’ve never registered with a party or taken the Democratic pledge.
\nSome contend the vow discourages independents from participating in the primary. Former DNC Chair Don Fowler counters:<\/p>\n

“We want everybody to come vote as long as it\ufffds done in good faith,” said Don Fowler, a former Democratic National Committee chairman. “I don’t think many Republicans will come. If they want to come and consider themselves a Democrat for the day, they\ufffdre welcome.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If that’s the case, why even have the requirement? It seems silly and will only filter out the more moderate voters who will likely determine the race this November.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The South Carolina Democratic Party is requiring that voters declare that they are Democrats in order to vote in Tuesdays’ primary. Voters who appear at their polling places will be asked to sign an oath swearing that “I consider myself to be a Democrat” before casting their ballots. If they don\ufffdt sign, they can\ufffdt vote. […]<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-559","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"h-entry","8":"hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}