Cathy Stewart, Nancy Hanks, and Sarah Lyons are pictured here, celebrating their recent election or re-election to posts in the Independence Party of New York. Each is the county chair of her respective county. They are also active in IndependentVoting, which teaches that political parties are bad for society. Thanks to Michael Drucker for the link.

The leaders of IndependentVoting acknowledge the irony that they are active in reducing the role of political parties in elections, while at the same time being active in a political party themselves. They say their activism in the Independence Party is “self-defense” in a partisan system.

Although IndependentVoting teaches that partisan election systems produce bad government, they have also been generally supportive of New York city Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the nation’s highest-ranked elected official who is a registered independent. Bloomberg has won the last three Mayoral elections. This creates another irony, because although IndependentVoting teaches that partisan elections are undesirable, they acknowledge that recent New York City Mayoral elections have produced good Mayors.

Although U.S. Senators Joseph Lieberman and Bernie Sanders were elected as independent candidates, neither is a registered independent. Lieberman is a registered Democrat and Sanders lives in a state that doesn’t have registration by party. Assuming Angus King is elected to the U.S. Senate later this year, he will supercede Mayor Bloomberg as the nation’s highest-ranked elected official who is registered “independent.”