Kentucky Senate Passes Bill to Require Parties to Let Independents Vote in their Primaries
February 2nd, 2010On February 2, the Kentucky Senate passed SB 53, which tells the political parties that nominate by primary that they must let independents vote in their primaries. The bill now goes to the House.
February 3rd, 2010 at 3:02 pm
This proposal is very likely unconstitutional. The parties, however, may hesitate to file suit against it, since that would make independent voters mad (see Arizona Libertarian Party v. Brewer [2007]).
The office of governor is the only one for which Kentucky has a provision for party runoff (or second) primaries. The threshold to avoid a runoff is 40%, and the provision took effect in 1995. However, no runoff has ever been necessary.
Look for the legislature to repeal the runoff provision this year, since the next state elections are in 2011. A bill for repeal passed one house in the last session, but the other chamber added something to it. To my knowledge, the two chambers never reconciled their differences.