Kevinf – I find that the parties work best with people who are aware of the candidates, beyond party affiliation.

A few years ago, when I was new to a ward, one of the women invited us to their home for a voting party. I asked her about the make up of the group, and she said that it was mostly couples who were members of different parties and who were politically active. I am pretty clear about my thoughts, so I don’t mind conversations with people who passionately oppose mine. I do a lot of political research, but I am always open to other view points.

The actual party was strange. I didn’t find out until I got to it that none of them had been part of a voting party before. Instead of coming with information about candidates and information about them that was relevant, two couples came without any information or their ballots. They had already voted. Another couple came with a flier from a political organization that told them how to vote, and they came with the intent of “making” all of us vote the “right way.”

After about an hour, we decided to leave. It wasn’t helpful to have a yelling argument about “generic democrats” and generic republicans” and who was going to hell. That experience led me to create the following rules for voting parties at my parties:

1) I send a list, on a spreadsheet, of the positions being voted on and the candidates for those positions. I also include all the ballot measures and the official state titles. We assume that everyone will have read the state voters pamphlet, and there is space for questions that came up, on the spreadsheet, and they are asked to email them to me in the nightly email. There is also room for other information, and people can bring mailers, and other info not online.

2) For the five days before the party I send an email reminder and solicit any links to websites or new articles people have found, and compile it to send out the next morning. The assumption is that everyone is spending about an hour a day reviewing that info. if questions have been asked, everyone attempts to find answers, and if we haven’t found one in a day, I usually just call the campaign and ask. (If the answer I get is not available generally, I send it on to one of the political reporters I know at the Oregonian and OPB.)

3) The night of the party, everyone shows up with their spreadsheets. We try to limit conversations on obvious things. Almost everyone will have made a decision about President, governor, etc. Most of the conversations are about local issues, and smaller races. I think the water board candidate I called was the strangest one. (He had been on the county water board for 6 years, and I was the first person to ask him a question about why he chose to be a candidate. He kept asking me which of his ex-wives had told me to call him.)

No matter what the issue or candidate is, we stop at fifteen minutes of conversation. With the build up information gathering, the party is really just a chance to hang out while we talk about which information felt most important to us, as we chose our votes.

It was the colonial system of being a vassal entity under the territorial system that gave outsiders such power over us, against which we naturally rebelled in the following years.

Careful, now. That’s Tea Party talk..

It was the colonial system of being a vassal entity under the territorial system that gave outsiders such power over us, against which we naturally rebelled in the following years.

“For Mormons always vote one way, and soon a voice they’ll get, And unison will bless the day that shines on Deseret.”

My question is about that phrase: “and soon a voice they’ll get.” This sounds to me like the simple desire to be made a state. But I would have assumed that in 1852 most of the political sentiment still would have been directed at some sort of independence for Deseret. Obtaining a mere “voice” doesn’t quite match the rhetoric associated with independence.

The voting party things sounds interesting. I am constantly frustrated when my wife and I sit down to fill out our mail in ballots here in Washington for a lot of the offices we really don’t know much about. It would be fun to get a bunch of people together so that we could talk them all over, and get some input beyond just my wife and I. Maybe we will have to consider that….

And this song, to the tune of “The Iron Rod,” could be our theme song! Thanks for the hint, Mahana!

After seeing the “political songs” that were written this election cycle and last, this is at least as good as the more recent ones. I wonder if the ever did a MoTab version for Fillmore to use on the stump.

Kevinf- Everytime someone tells me that all Mormons should vote the same way, I tell them that I would be happy to have them join me in voting for the candidates I believe in, and that they are welcome to come over so we can fill out our ballots together.
(We are 100% vote by mail in Oregon, so voting parties are not uncommon.)

“Mormons always vote one way…”. As one who frequently does not vote in unison his fellow saints, I really, really, hate that, but I think it may have been pretty accurate in 1852.