Let’s appoint some independents

We're learning to vote in blocs in this presidential election year, when we could be voting for new ideas.

My relatives call me a Democrat because I have new ideas, which I consider to be amusing. The late Frank Nye, associate editor and political writer at The Gazette, registered as an independent so that folks who checked his voting status would find that he was nonpartisan.

In my previous life, I was an independent journalist. I wrote a political public opinion column this time of year called, “What's What Out on the Acres.”

My point is that we don't listen to new ideas. We categorize ideas as being either a Democrat idea or a Republican idea, which causes me to think that we should involve independents more in the political process. If you're fed up with both the Democrats and the Republicans, you can still be heard if we had an independent voice in government.

How about nonpartisan commissions and offices in the Congress and state legislature? Why not appoint independents to legislative and congressional committees? Nye was never able to have an impact on legislative developments because he was a registered independent. Wait, didn't he have the great idea to switch the state legislature from area representation to representation by popularity? That shows that independently minded folks have great ideas. They should be heard.

Next time when we organize government, let's appoint some independents. Too often party bosses require appointees to vote party lines when they could be independent thinkers.

Al Swegle

Cedar Rapids