I can understand how a political party would not want people who aren’t a registered member of that party to vote in their primaries, because you aren’t necessarily sure of their loyalties, or if they’re secretly from the other party just trying to muddy up the waters. Even just typing all that felt like unnecessary drama. See what I mean about how right George Washington was about parties and how they cause unnecessary drama amongst the people? Oy!
There are many different kinds of primaries, from fully closed (only party members), partially open (can pick which primary you want to vote in but you’re limited to only voting for the candidates from that party for all positions), or fully open (also called nonpartisan) primaries.
Closed Primaries
With more and more Americans self-identifying as something other than Democrat or Republican, what that leaves to vote in closed primaries is more and more the extreme ends of America. Then what happens in the general election is everyone else is left to choose from far left and far right and have to hold their nose, pick their poison, etc. Make no mistake about it, closed primaries are a huge part of the polarization problem in our country.
When legislators from safe drawn districts with closed primaries go to work, they live in constant fear of being primaried by someone more extreme than themselves, so they are incentivized to be as outlandish and over the top in pursuit of their party’s talking points as they can be. I think we can all name lots of officeholders who fit that bill.
Semi-Open Primaries
Semi-open primaries are a half measure and better than nothing, but we can do better. Let’s say you’re an independent voter in a state with semi-open primaries. You go to vote in the primaries and you have to pick either the Democratic ballot or the Republican ballot.
What if you like a Democrat for job X and a Republican for job Y? Too bad, you can only vote for all Democrats or all Republicans depending on which ballot you pick. The upside of semi-open primaries is that you’re expanding participation to more than just the partisan base, so there’s a little bit of incentive for candidates to not run quite as far to the extreme of their party, but not much.
Semi-open primaries don’t end polarization in our country, at best they keep it status quo or slow the rate of polarization.
Fully Open Primaries
Fully open primaries are where all candidates from all parties (and independents) are on a single ballot and all voters, regardless of affiliation, vote. Some detractors like to call it a “jungle primary” but it’s truly a “primary” or first general election. Because of that, often times there could be lots of candidates running, maybe even 10 or more. The purpose of this primary election is to whittle down the number of candidates for the general election.
Some states like California that implemented fully open primaries decided that only the top two candidates would go onto the general election. Other states like Alaska have decided that the top 4 should go onto the general election.
The biggest danger of open primaries (and any electoral reform) is that the parties will do whatever they can to try and game the system, get around it, etc. One frequent criticism of top two open primaries is that it can result in both candidates for the general election being from the same party. That’s why I like top 4 or top 5 going onto the general election.
The biggest benefits of fully open primaries are that by getting all voters voting in the same primary you’re giving candidates a powerful incentive to appeal to more than just their base, and you’re eliminating the possibility of partisan games. Let me give you an example.
Where I live we have closed primaries. A few years ago there was an election for a state attorney for the region. There was only one candidate from party X (won’t say which party because it’s not important because both parties do what I’m about to describe), and multiple candidates from party Y. This meant that party X did not have a primary, but party Y did.
The incumbent state attorney was from party Y and party X hated their guts and wanted them gone. Since there was no primary for party X, many of those voters changed their voting affiliation to party Y so they could vote in that primary. Guess what, the incumbent lost their primary. The joke was on the party X folks anyway because the new party Y primary winner went on to win the general election.
Shenanigans like that cannot occur with fully open primaries. If the above scenario had been a fully open primary, the sole candidate from party X would have been on the same primary ballot as the 5 candidates from party Y, and all of the voters from party X would have been compelled to vote for their party X candidate in the primary if they wanted to ensure that the general election had a candidate from party X. By putting everyone on the same ballot it is a level playing field and the old nuclear war theory of “mutually assured destruction” (M.A.D.) is in effect.
Lastly, fully open primaries eliminate the taxation without representation problem that closed primaries create. When you close primaries you are essentially telling the taxpayers that are registered as something other than a D or R that you are going to use their taxes to hold primary elections that they themselves cannot vote in. I think the folks who dumped some tea in Boston Harbor centuries ago would have a problem with that, don’t you?
For more on open primaries check out the wonderful folks at Open Primaries. They’ve been leading the fight for years for open primaries and have lots of great info about which states have open and closed primaries and how to get involved.
Perry Waag 