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If We Survive This, Let’s End Open Primaries
There have been four closed contests so far this season: Iowa, Nevada, Oklahoma and Alaska. Notice anything about those? Cruz won three out of four.
I have several thoughts on this. First, it makes me feel better about the Republican Party, as it looks like Trump is winning largely because he’s pulling Democrats and Independents in to vote in the Republican contest (presumably in some combination of actual support and sabotage). Second, it makes me feel better about the chances of taking him down, as we now shift to primarily closed contests (including Florida). Third, it makes me think the Democrats (and, indeed, all of us) should be very afraid if Trump actually gets the nomination. Fourth, it makes me think Ted Cruz is probably the first choice of most actual Republicans.
But mostly it makes me scream into the night: Whose idiot idea was it to have open primaries?!
I’ve always thought this was a terrible idea. The Republican nominee should be just that, the Republican nominee. If you’re an Independent or Democrat, you can decide to support the Republican in the general or not, and Republican voters can take that into consideration when choosing their nominee, but if Democrats and Independents can help choose the Republican nominee, in what sense is he or she even really the Republican nominee?
End open primaries, regardless of the outcome.
Published in Elections, General, Politics
And would this not have kept JEB! in the mix much longer while working against Trump. Bush would have been the GOPe super delegate choice early.
Yeah as a Canadian member I find the US Primary system really stupid.
If you want to vote in my party you have to be a paid member. Also the party runs the leadership. The Provincial Government has nothing to do with it.
The fact that states can choose a primary election date and how its run for any political party is NONSENSE!
By the way actual delegated elections where you don’t know the outcome are AMAZING!
That didn’t happen in South Carolina for the simple fact that there is no such thing as registration by party in SC. You’re either registered or not, political party isn’t part of the registration process.
It didn’t really happen in Mass, either, as far as I can tell. The story I saw said that 20k Dem voters quit, but only 3,500 went to the GOP. The rest were unenrolled (i.e. independent.)
What most people don’t realize is that party registration is small in Massachusetts. Only 12% of voters are registered as GOP, around 35% as Democrat. Over half are unenrolled. People ditching the parties and going unenrolled is a trend that’s been around long before Trump.
However, that doesn’t mean that voters in Mass weren’t strategically voting for Trump. Unenrolled voters can vote in either primary and the state is very liberal. If I was a Democrat in an open primary state, I’d definitely vote for Trump. Who wins the Dem primary matters less than who wins in November and Trump is the weakest GOP candidate by far.
OK, did someone look into the origins of this process? It seems to me that party affiliation should not be connected to registering to vote but voting in a party primary should be determined by some requirements promulgated by the party separate from voter registration but requiring that such voter registration be part of those requirements. In other words, to vote in a party primary, one must be registered to vote and be a bonafide participant in the party processes.
I totally agree. Open primaries – for either party – make no sense at all.
If either the Democrats or Republicans in South Carolina are interested in that sort of process I’ve never heard of it. Traditionally Republicans would be adamantly opposed to that due to a century of Democratic Party tyranny in the state.
More explanation why Republicans would be opposed to having only Republicans vote in the Republican Primary.
I quite agree. Can we also end winner-take-all primaries?
I don’t even know what would be required to quash open primaries fully. I imagine there are strong freedom of association grounds to do so though. Thumbing through California Democratic Party v Jones, it indicates clearly that it is unconstitutional to force an open primary.
Although digging deeper into the matter and looking at Tashjian v Republican Party of Connecticut it seems that forcing closed primaries is also unconstitutional.
But I take a more cynical view and imagine that parties in certain states simply want to do whatever it is in their interest to do, and just make up arguments to support that position.
I think superdelegates make sense because they’d be easier to pull off, and more transparent, and trip over fewer constitutional issues.
Most citizens of the state who are not recent arrivals from outside the South would be strongly opposed to being forced to register by party. Some of the suggestions in this thread about declaring allegiance to a political party or even paying dues to a political party would be DOA. The idea of having to pay to exercise the right to vote is something nobody would even suggest in public as it smacks of a poll tax. I suspect you’d find this to be the case in other Southern states too.
So, it isn’t about making sure that only Democrats can vote in a Democrat primary election– it’s about being forced to declare allegiance to a political party.
With the enormous influx of people coming into SC from NY, NJ, MA, PA, MI, OH and elsewhere that may change over time but, again, I’ve never seen an effort to move to registration by political party.
OK, I get what you are saying. I don’t think one should have to register to vote in a general election by party but I do think only those who favor a specific party should participate in primaries. That also reminds me to ask about party platforms at national conventions for selecting a party’s candidate. How would a candidate like Trump possibly match a Republican Platform produced by the Republican Convention? Is the platform put together before or after the nominee selection?
I think that there is a plausible argument for the benefit of open primaries. I don’t agree with it, but I find it plausible.
Having an open primary means that GOP-leaning Independents have a voice in the nominating process. This may have two benefits: (1) it may result in selection of a candidate with a better chance of winning, and (2) it may make Independents more likely to vote for the GOP candidate in the general election.
Just as a followup, was listening to the oral arguments in the cases I mentioned. If you’re a total geek you might enjoy such things. Scalia gets some very good points in as well.
https://www.oyez.org/cases/1999/99-401
And it seems that as to “who’s bright idea was this,” it was the state party organizations and state governments themselves, depending on the circumstances. This wasn’t a national thing, but sort of evolved over time.
It would make for an interesting discussion for an expert anyway. How exactly does the RNC/DNC interact with the various state party operations? Because at a glance it looks like the state organizations have more to do with how things are than the national apparatus.
Yes, but the national party sets the delegate rules. For example, though California is much larger than Texas, it barely has more delegates. It is punished for being so liberal, and Texas rewarded for being so conservative.
States may have their primaries whenever they want, but they must live with the consequences of their choices. Going before 3/15 means you must assign delegates proportionally.
The GOP could say, “If you don’t close your primary, your delegates get cut in half.”
Cross posted from another thread
Having lived in most of my adult life in Democratic controlled urban areas, I have had countless conversations with lifelong Democrats who gleefully talk about voting the GOP primary in years where the Democratic nomination is uncontested.
On another forum I frequent, a poster bragged about not having voted Republican in the Presidential election since Reagan first time (which he calls the worst mistake of his life) but he exclusively votes in the Republican primary.
That the GOP lets their political opponents have a say in who we put up as President is indescribably stupid. But, letting Iowa and New Hampshire winnow the field is equally stupid.
Plausible, yes, but I agree with you in not agreeing with it. As I noted in the OP, Republicans are perfectly capable of taking into account electability/appeal to Independents when making their decision. It’s possible some Independents might feel more included and therefore more favorable toward the Republican if they got to vote in primaries, but it’s not worth the trade-off to me.
This seems like the right solution to me, if a little gruesome. Personally, I’d rather cut in half the party leaders who decided on an open primary. Oh, wait, you probably mean halve their number. Rats.
Why not go all out and let everyone vote in both (all) primaries? That way everyone can try to sabotage the other guys while supporting their own. If it doesn’t balance out, it might at least lead to mutual deterrence.
I think we should eliminate the primaries altogether and go back to the original electoral college where we vote for the local people we want to to select the next President. That way, the candidates can focus their campaign to the members of the electoral college (saving several billion dollars) and leave us alone.
Good point.
Bribingbuying local officials would be much more cost-effective.I’d rather organize like the Olympic hockey games: two pools with multiple contestants duking it out with the top two in each pool filling a bracket for head-to-head competition.
Simple suggestions to improve the primary process
Where have I heard that “skin in the game” phrase before?
Seriously though, this makes a certain amount of sense. The primary could be a fundraiser for the general election fund (rather than a drain on the party as it is now).
Though I’m reminded of some British guy that I heard of on the Delingpole podcast who joined the Labour Party for 3 quid so he could vote for Milliband to be the leader of the Labour Party.
That we have to reform the primary process is virtually an axiom. But changing the process shouldn’t involve throwing it overboard. I recall (for a British perspective) Daniel Hannan on UK expressing fulsome appreciation for the fact that voters can change the direction of a political party by choosing candidates that reflect their views rather than direct selection by party bosses. I think closed primaries and proportional delegate allotment would go a long way. I think a more effective reform would be for the parties to segment primaries (no more caucuses, please) by geographic areas; New England early on, SEC a week later, Rocky Mountains, etc. Force a wider focus rather than spending 4 years sucking up to ethanol interests in Iowa and going door to door for votes in a state with 4 electoral votes.
Super delegates means that the Democrat Party can install whomever they please as their nominee, without regard to actual voting. One might presume with some comfort that people who find Bernie acceptable and Hillary! not acceptable will be angry at the way the party has staged Hillary!’s coronation party. The Democrats don’t really want a socialist in charge, no matter how socialist they are in practice. They want someone who can be bought. Bernie? Not so much. Hillary! Hey Hills, how’s it (her purse strap) hanging?
I have been tempted by the idea of regional primaries in the past. What bothers me is that it would probably increase the leverage of media advertising/commentary and reduce retail politics. I don’t know that there is any special superiority of NH or IA, other than that they are small enough that retail, in-person, campaigning is effective there. The in-person stuff is a good filtering mechanism, although obviously not perfect.
My home state, Maine, is technically a “closed” caucus state, although we do allow unenrolled (“Independent”) voters to register the day of the caucus as Republicans. That seems to me to be a good compromise.
I don’t know. I see the reasoning behind it, and I’m not a populist democrat type in general, but the Democratic Party’s use of the superdelegates rubs me the wrong way. Too insidery.
Of course, voting in the Republican primary, I don’t have to suffer their consequences.
The super delegates were intended to protect the Dems from nominating another extremist like McGovern. They failed on the extremist part, but he got elected, so maybe it works for them.