Election Reform: The Necessity of Closed Primaries

The Supreme Court should have taken the case on the constitutionality of closed primaries — essential to the freedom of association and a system of quality control for American civic life.

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NOTE: Election reform is not just about paper ballots and inked thumbs. It’s also about how we go about choosing our party nominees.

I grew up in an overwhelmingly single-party (Democrat) Arkansas. Time after time, if Republicans somehow produced a candidate capable of performing well in November, Democrats flooded into our open primary to sabotage him. There weren’t many Republicans so it didn’t take many Democrats to do it.

This is “democracy”? No, this is a sick joke. It’s also a recipe for one-party rule, which was and is the point.

In California today it’s far worse. All candidates run on a single primary ballot — the parties are rendered irrelevant, incapable of choosing their own standard bearers. But don’t think this affects both parties equally: oh no. The result is that frequently, the top two vote getters who thereby advance to the general election are both Democrats: no Republican is permitted to app…