Liberalism backfires in inner city elections

Are you wondering what happened in the Ferguson election of 2014, given the national result?

After all, Ferguson has a white Republican mayor.

The shooting of Michael Brown, Jr in Ferguson has the city at the epicenter of a media storm. Ferguson is 67 percent black, yet five of six city council members and Mayor James Knowles are white.

As Conservatives, this means nothing to us. We figure the best people were elected. But for Liberals, these ratios constitute a real problem, and a problem they attempted to solve through manipulation.

 

So in order to insure Democrat majorities, Liberals did two things in the inner cities. They changed the timing of elections, and they changed the nature of the ballot.

First, let’s discuss timing.

Ferguson holds municipal elections in April of odd-numbered years. You might think this is something they pulled in order to get Republicans in power in a black city, however Ferguson is far from unique in this timing.

Believe it or not about three-fourths of municipalities in America hold their elections in odd years. This was a Progressive-era reform intended lessen the impact of national elections. Liberals believe rightfully that politics are local, and they are. The felt the change would shelter crazy Liberal ideas from the national scrutiny, thereby getting more Democrats elected. Unfortunately for them, the effect has been dramatically different, and in fact has reduced voter turnout.

Next, Liberals changed the nature of the ballot. Liberals have so dominated city politics, that they have fought to get the labels removed. In St. Louis you might never see a Republican run for a city office, so why bother with political affiliation.

Ferguson holds non-partisan elections, where party labels are eliminated from the ballot. This change is another Liberal reform that has had marked effect.

Because of the change, people know less about a candidate’s party platform, ergo less about the candidate. This has proven to yet again be a hindrance to getting people to vote.

 

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