06:06 PM CST on Tuesday, February 21, 2006

By Doug Miller / 11 News

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Early voting for the March 7 primaries began Tuesday.  Turnout has been very light, which is exactly the way some candidates want it.

At early voting sites campaign volunteers were almost lonely.

“You’ll have lower turnout for primaries,” said Randall Ellis, campaign worker for State Rep. Garnet Coleman.  “It’s not a city election or a primary election.”

A low turnout might look like bad news for democracy, but it could be good news for two candidates who aren’t even on the ballot.

“Unless we put partisan politics aside, we’ll never fix what’s broken,” said Carole Keeton Strayhorn who is running for governor as an Independent.

And so is Kinky Friedman.

But their loyal supporters will have to gather 45,000 signatures on petitions just to get them on the ballot.

But there is a catch here.  If you want to sign one of those petitions for Kinky Friedman or Carole Strayhorn, you cannot vote in either the Republican or Democratic primary.  If you vote in one of those primaries and you sign one of those petitions, your signature won’t count.

“It doesn’t affect me directly,” Friedman said.

So both of the Independents have an unusual message: Don’t vote.

“A lot of people don’t understand that if they vote in one of the primaries—whether it’s the Democratic primary or the Republican primary—they become a de facto member of one of those parties.  And state law indicates at that point that they’re not allowed to sign a petition,” explained Clara Mattox, Kinky Friedman Campaign coordinator in Harris County.

“Yeah, it takes people a while,” Ellis said.

So in this lonely election season, some politicians want voters to stay away.