Republican Party of Virginia

Here's a real life example of how choosing candidates at a convention instead of through primaries hurts GOTV efforts.

Next Tuesday, Fairfax County, Virginia will hold a special election to replace new Rep. Gerry Connolly as chairman of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors. The Republican candidate is Pat Herrity.

I'll be out of town, so I requested an absentee ballot, which came in the mail yesterday. That same day, I got a hand addressed piece of AB Chase mail from the Fairfax County Democrats, along with one anti-Herrity mailer from the DPV and mail from a third party candidate running on a platform of low taxes.

What's wrong with this picture? Two mail pieces from Democrats, one a hand-addressed AB chase piece. One from an independent low-tax candidate, who for all I know, could be a Republican (we don't have party listed on our ballots for county offices -- causing confusion if you don't have a sample ballot from your county committee).

Why do I get more Democratic mail than Republican mail? On a couple of occasions, I have availed myself of the opportunity to help select the Democratic nominee when we had no contested primary. But I have also voted in Republican primaries, including the extremely low-turnout VA-8 primary last year.

The bottom line: There is no reason that as a past primary voter who is a supervoter in both primaries and generals should not be getting Republican mail. I also got very little GOTV mail from Republicans in the general election last year -- though I did get robocalls from John McCain in the primary.

A big part of the problem: here in Virginia we select many of our nominees by conventions, instead of primaries, lowering our potential GOTV universe -- especially in critical situations like a special general election in the middle of February when a good turnout operation could flip the executive office in a Democratic-leaning county.

Today is the Virginia primary. Candidly, it is also the first time I have voted in the Republican primary since 2005. (I voted for Amit Singh, but if I lived a few blocks over, the Gerry Connolly-Leslie Byrne food fight for the Dem nod in VA-11 looks pretty tempting.)

More often than not in Virginia, the GOP primary is meaningless. Many high-profile races, like the Jim Gilmore squeaker over relative unknown Bob Marshall for the Senate, are decided by nominating conventions.

Virginia also does not have party registration. The only way they know who you are is which party's primary you voted in. Because I have availed myself of the opportunity to select the opposition's nominee and have not voted in the (meaningless) GOP primary while living at my current address, I only get Democratic mail and door knocks.