The only argument that I can imagine in favor of the straight party option on a ballot is that someone might accidentally vote for the wrong candidate when they mean to vote for candidates from a single party. This is where technology can help us. Since we have already moved to touch-screen voting machines we could change the straight party selection so that the straight party selection would make the candidates from our chosen party stand out but the voter would still be expected to select the individual candidates for their votes to be cast in each race.

When we recognize that most “news” is really entertainment it’s easy to see that politics is really a sport. John Florez is absolutely right in saying It’s time we all join the game and back some rookies. Assuming that more people actually join the game sometime before election day John suggests:
Maybe this time voters will [...]

Today in church the bishop gave a lesson on how to recognize and avoid the deception of the devil. One of the points that struck home with me (which was limited to that time when I was not chasing my son - I can’t wait for nursery) was how much of that deception comes in [...]

Seeing all the recent commentary on the Democratic Primary contest I have seen the pattern of less and less substantive discussion and more and more trash talk (by trash talk I’m not referring to the tone of the “discussion” but rather the way that it looks just like trash talk in sports - it has [...]

It’s easy to find people describing the moral argument against government run social programs (forced charity encourages selfishness) but I don’t think I’ve ever heard a more compelling logical argument for the negative consequences of substituting an institutional approach to a problem for a solution based on individual initiative than this one.
With no hint of [...]

I had planned on participating in last night’s caucus meetings, but life intervened and I was not able to. That being said, I am still interested to learn what happened in those caucus meetings for my precinct (Lehi-08). I would love to know the outcome of the Republican and Democratic caucuses, especially the Democratic caucus [...]

It’s amazing how an difference so small that we can’t even predict it can very noticeably change the outcome of a standardized process. I saw this in action today while baking cookies.
Laura and discovered that the cookies cooked differently on the two cookie sheets we have. We could put the dough on one cookie sheet [...]

I chuckled at the NBC report that Bill Clinton said the following about a general election campaign between Hillary Clinton and John McCain:
“I think it would be a great thing if we had an election year where you had two people who loved this country and were devoted to the interest of this country,” [...]

Kip, at the Wide Middle, invites others to share Questions for the Candidates. This comes the very day that I have a question that I would ask any congressional candidate.
What part, or parts of the Change Congress movement would you pledge to support (if any). The four principles of the movement are that:

Candidates and congressmen [...]

I just discovered The Wide Middle today and I think that the concept of “open source public policy” is an example of how more political discourse ought to take place - based on the assumption that we agree on more things than we disagree on and that we can find solutions where we identify problems. [...]