Closed Primaries: A Solution In Search of a Problem. Why?

 In his Farewell Address, President Washington warned us against political parties. He said:

They serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force—to put in the place of the delegated will of the nation the will of a party; often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community…

They are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion… 

The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal, permanent despotism.

In 1975, the Louisiana Legislature adopted the state’s Open Primary system, which became a model for the nation.  Instead of having three elections — a first party primary, a second party primary, and a general election — the Open Primary system de-emphasized political parties. It consolidated the election schedule into two elections — an Open Primary in which all voters could participate and a Runoff. If one got a majority in the primary, the election was decided. If no one got a majority, the winner of the Runoff Election was elected. 

The Open Primary eliminated the need for party primaries.  Candidates were viewed primarily as citizens with a party affiliation, not as the official representative of a party.  The Open Primary condensed the time for campaigning from a year-long process to a few months.  It reduced the cost of campaigning because there were only two elections instead of three.

Over the past 50 years, the Open Primary system worked very well, especially for Republicans who moved from no statewide elected officials to all Republican statewide elected officials.  In those years, the Legislature went from four Republicans out of 144 senators and representatives to a two-thirds’ Republican majority in both the House and Senate.

But that wasn’t good enough. This governor and Legislature in their mutual confusion passed a new Closed Primary bill, returning us to two party primaries followed by a general election.

The argument was that Republicans should decide who the Republican nominee was.  Ok.  But then the bill was amended with the approval of the governor to say that “no party” voters would get to vote in the new “Republican” primary.  Why? Bear in mind that there are 1,052,000 Republican voters in the state and more than 800,000 “no party” voters.

Under this so-called Closed Primary, the 800,000 “no party” voters will get to vote in the “Republican” primary!

Seriously?  Yes! So it’s not a Republican primary at all.

Hundreds of thousands of “moderate” no-party voters could easily determine who wins the Republican nomination.

There is good reason to believe that the Closed Primary bill was amended to allow “no party” voters to participate in the Republican primary specifically to allow Sen. Bill Cassidy to spend his millions to get these voters to vote for him in the “Republican” primary.

There are so many things that this governor and the 2/3rds Republican majority in the Louisiana House and Senate have done that are absolutely horrible.  Examples:

•Creating a racially gerrymandered Congressional district plan that gave the Democrats and specifically Cleo Fields a seat in Congress, endangering the Republican majority in Congress.

•Creating gerrymandered Louisiana Supreme Court districts that added a Democrat and flipped the court from solidly conservative to marginally liberal.

•Amendment No. 2 on the ballot last spring that would have authorized churches and other religious ministries to be taxed.

•Supporting expropriation of private property for these absurd  carbon capture projects.

•The creation of the Closed Primary system that destroys the Open Primary, a superior system of voting, and allows non-Republicans to decide who the Republican nominees will be.

The answer is not to elect more Democrats but to elect independent-minded conservative Republicans who actually think and who can’t be bought by the allure of money or power or be threatened or intimidated.  The current Legislature lacks wisdom and a sound mind.  Not all, of course, but enough to make this Legislature a threat to our liberty and our values.