Taking advantage of the twisted primary design
[NOTE: I asked this question in an earlier post, but I’m going to highlight it and expand on it here.]
I wonder what’s to prevent a candidate who is against a party—and possibly out to destroy it—from using that party’s primary process to harm it? And what makes any political outsider who’s never held office, and switched back and forth between parties many times, a member of a certain party? Is it just because that person says he/she is at the moment, and gets enough signatures to enter the race? I don’t think the situation I’ve described in this paragraph has ever come up before, so I don’t think party leaders ever envisioned it.
Then there are the primaries themselves. For example, South Carolina is a state (one of many) with a completely open primary, which has always seemed insane to me. Why allow Democrats to choose the Republican nominee, and vice versa? Makes no sense. It’s somewhat difficult to think of a good remedy for that, though, because you want people to be able to switch if they really are independents. Or do you? Should only the party regulars be allowed to vote in their party’s primaries?
Usually the official candidates in a primary have been fairly conventional, although different from each other in terms of policies and political leanings. The ones who are not tend to be members of fringe parties with very little following. I cannot recall ever having had a candidate who was out to destroy a party run for office within that party. But many people are thinking that might be the case with Trump—although I don’t really think so; I think his main motivation is narcissism combined with the drive for power. However, there is no doubt in my mind that many (perhaps even a majority) of his supporters are determined to back him in order to destroy the GOP. Some of them are from the left, and some from the right, but they have that in common, and in open primary states they all can vote in the GOP primary for him.
The only thing I can think of stopping the ones on the left is their possible desire to vote in the contested Democratic primary—because you can’t vote in both, at least not legally. I find it astounding, however, that there is no protection from voters using either party’s own primary to destroy it, and that the parties seem to have no way of dealing with this.
We should go back to smoke-filled rooms. And free beer for voters!
The Republican Party in Colorado almost lost its major party status in 2010. See this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_gubernatorial_election,_2010.
Good question to which I have no answer. I think Jay Cost of the Weekly Standard has written about some reforms the party needs to make. (in the sense of how they conduct nominations, party organization)
I think there was a Supreme Court case (maybe 1980s) that took up the subject of whether a party could bar people from running in their primary. The Supremes said no.
IANAL so I can’t look it up. Always seemed odd to me.
I am not sure what protections you can put into place, maybe being a registered Republican for X amount of time stipulation, but something needs to be done. I truly believe that Donald Trump is indeed a phony candidate whose sole purpose is to bring down the Republican Party and is in the tank for the Clintons. I know that is pretty conspiracy theory(er?) but it is the only thing that actually makes sense. Occam’s Razor.
Perhaps we have it backwards. Instead, how about a law that states that if a voter votes in either party’s primary, they can’t vote for a candidate outside that party in an election year.
note: the flaws in that proposal are obvious, the point is that liberty (people can vote for whom they wish) without increasing regulation is only possible in a society that honors ethical behavior (people play fair) by rejecting the premise that the end justifies the means. Once that premise is accepted by the majority, corruption has to increase. Corruption is evidence of unethical behavior becoming the norm.
I think that this is MUCH more likely to happen when one party has a candidate running effectively uncontested. I don’t think that this will be a factor this year because the Sanders/Clinton race is so hotly contested. Sanders is obviously winning the popular vote, but Clinton has the superdelegates. Add those two factors together and the Democratic race is virtually tied. It turns out to be an all-hands-on-deck, every vote counts contest, so Democrats are not as likely to switch parties just to interfere with the Republican primary when their own primary is on the line the way it is this year.
My solution to the open primary issue is this. Only registered Rs can vote in the GOP primary and only registered Ds can vote in the Dem primary. Independents who want to vote in the primaries can change their registration to do so. That would prevent any sand bagging by one side or the other. Too restrictive? Where does it say that voting should be as easy as falling off a log and subject to manipulation?
J.J.:
There are states like that, and it doesn’t do away with the problem. People in those states often register as a party member and then change back to Independent afterward the primary. You have to give people the freedom to be able to change parties, don’t you? The question is how far ahead of a primary must you register as a member of one party or other?
Sevenwheel:
Yes, I know, and I wrote a post about that last month.
However, in a state like SC, that isn’t operating so much. It has an open primary AND Clinton is way way ahead in the polls. So people may not mind switching to vote GOP to help Trump, although of course not as many as there would be in a completely uncontested primary. It’s really a state by state thing, depending on how the Democratic primary is looking in each state, and what the rules are in that state about switching.
I agree with your final thought: the Dem primary is too closely contested and the passions (at least between the two rivals) are too high for people to waste their votes on gaming the other party’s nominations.
If Dems have a clear winner soon then yes, that would be a problem.
Also, open primaries are insane. A throwback to a more innocent age when we were all Americans at least in theory.
Neo-neocon queries:
YES!!
Further to my comment:
A party regular should be someone who has been a registered member of the party continuously for at least 2 years prior to the party’s primary or caucus.
Being against party’s establishment is not the same than being against the party, taking into account that about half of the people in the party support that candidate.
Unless US politics has gone from “we the people” to “we the establishment”, which seems to be the case, by the way.
Yann:
Then the remedy is to form a new party and it can have a primary of its own, too. Parties have a right to keep their primaries to themselves. The question is how to go about doing it.
Is there a way to see how many primary votes in the Republican primaries in the open primary states are from registered Republicans versus non registered Republican voters? If so it might be possible to compare this to previous presidential primaries to see if non registered Republican voters are attempting to sway the vote. Also maybe there is a way to check if Democratic activists in open primary states are encouraging left leaning independents (or Democrats who in some states can vote in either the Dem primary or Repub primary but not both) to vote in the Republican primary for the candidate considered least likely to win the general? Maybe on leftist websites or email lists etc? My concern is that maybe Donald Trump is benefiting from crossover voters.