A trial will be held in Idaho Republican Party v Ysursa between October 13 and October 15. This is the case in which the Republican Party of Idaho asserts that the state’s open primary law has injured the party. There are two political scientist expert witnesses on each side, and they will be testifying and being subject to cross-examination.
The chief factual dispute is whether voters who have no loyalty to the Republican Party have been choosing to vote in contested Republican primaries and influencing the outcome. The case is in U.S. District Court, 08-cv-165.
One of these centuries the MORON courts will detect that PUBLIC nominations for PUBLIC offices is PUBLIC business — TOTALLY subject to PUBLIC laws —
top 2 primary, closed primary, open primary, ALL combinations possible.
P.R. and App.V. — NO primaries are needed.
Is the Idaho Republican Party allowed to have a closed primary if it pays for it? Or is it allowed to caucus if it wants to?
It seems to me that if the state is paying for a primary it should be able to set the rules. I can understand why the Republican Party may be irked that non-Republicans are choosing its candidates.
P.R. and/or Approval Voting are good ideas, but as long as political parties exist, it makes sense for them to be able to decide who represents them. It also makes sense for them to pay for it (instead of the state).
There is no procedure by which the Republican Party can avoid the Idaho open primary law. Even if the Republican Party paid for its own primary, the state wouldn’t recognize the results.
The 9th Circuit in the Washington follow-up case to California Democratic Party v Jones, ruled that voters considered themselves to be Republicans or Democrats, even though Washington had no party registration, and that therefore the Washington blanket primary was not materially different than that of California, where there was party registration. Both permitted cross-over voting.
Ironically, Washington Republicans seek a return to the type of partisan primary that Party Chairman Semenko seeks to rid Idaho of.
There is no basis for requiring Idaho to maintain dossiers of the political beliefs of its citizens, or for the State to verify voters adherence to party dogma.
So if Party Chairman Semenko wins his case, the solution is to let a political party provide to state election officials either (1) a list of authorized party voters; or (2) a list of non-authorized party voters. The political party could compile these lists in any manner they chose, as long as they did not discriminate on the basis of race, ethnicity, age, sex, religion, economic status (including payment of a fee), or serve as a literacy test.
Alternatively, political parties could station Political Control Officers at each polling place who could give a thumbs up or thumbs down as each voter presented themselves to election officials.
Election officials would then mark the ballot to prevent the voter from choosing particular parties in the primary. While the Republican Party may permit a voter to vote in its primary, it has no right to require them to do so.
All primary candidates would also appear on a non-partisan primary list. So a voter could continue to pick his party in private on the ballot, or could choose to vote in the non-partisan primary. Candidates could qualify from the non-partisan ballot, either by winning the primary, or achieving some level of support (5%?).
Or alternatively, Idaho could switch to a true Open Primary like Washington, California, and Louisiana.
Why doesn’t the Idaho Republican Party just go ahead and lobby the State legislature to change the Idaho voter registration law to ASK voters which party or no party that they desire to register with. Then they can easily SEE which primary voters are Republican!
Republicans in general don’t want to change the system, particularly, elected officials. At the 2008 party convention, delegates voted in favor of retaining the current open primary.
Rod Beck, one of the supporters of the lawsuit lost the Republican primary for a state legislative seat in 2002, 2004, and 2006. Party Chairman Norm Semanko finished 5th in a Republican primary for a congressional seat.
What is *loyalty* to a gang of party hacks ???
A New Age blood oath ??? —
See the loyality oaths required by Germany folks to Hitler in the 1930s — with the resulting World War II — about 70,000,000 DEAD plus millions more injured plus much of European property destroyed.