The Independent View: Independents Make Their Voices Heard in Ohio

As a political activist and a member of IndependentVoting.org, these types of participation is what we all have to take part in, if we wish to take back the "People's House".

Several days before President Obama’s Commission on Election Administration hearing in Ohio, the Canton Repository published Independent Ohio leader Cynthia Carpathios' letter to the editor:

Obama Commission Should Study Barriers to Independent Voting

President Obama’s Commission on Election Administration has been holding public hearings around the country. The 10-member body is tasked with presenting recommendations to the president about how to “improve the voter experience.” Independent voters have a lot to say about the topic.

Representatives of independent voter groups from around the country have attended hearings in D.C., Miami, Denver and Philadelphia and submitted testimony. Independents from the Midwest, including a number of independents who are part of Independent Ohio, a group of independent voting activists in Ohio who are under the umbrella of IndependentVoting.org, a national association for independent voters, will be attending and testifying at the hearing scheduled in Cincinnati on Sept. 20.

Independents are deeply concerned that America’s political process is in crisis and agree this deserves serious attention. But the commission has carved out a narrow mandate that we believe falls short of the public debate we need to have.

There are specific defects affecting independent voters that the commission doesn’t seem prepared to address.

For example, here in Ohio, independents can vote only on issues, not on candidates, in the primaries unless they choose to join one of the parties and vote on their ballot. With 40 percent of Americans now identifying as independent, looking at these process issues should be a commission priority. We urge the commission to address them in the report it produces from these hearings.

Independents believe that reform won’t come from the political parties themselves — they have too much to lose — but from outside of it and from the bottom up. We are working to expose the barriers to fully participating in the electoral process that independents face.

On September 20 2013, independents from Ohio and Kentucky made presentations to the President's Commission on Election Administration at their final public hearing in Cincinnati. Independent Ohio leader Rick Robol reported that when Commission Co-Chairman Ginsberg asked our team to condense their presentations because they had "previously heard from the independents," we made it clear we would be heard! Robol, Mark Ritter (Independent Kentucky), Sadie Stewart, Jonathan Lippincott and Mary Rook each shared their unique perspectives on the barriers to participation faced by independent voters.