OK, so hear me out.
Only about 20% of eligible voters vote in primaries. If we all just became Republicans, we could do a reverse Trump and put the candidates on the ballot we find to be more normal. Then vote D in the General.
It wouldn’t actually take that many, and watching it go down would be pretty hysterical.
Out of curiosity, is there anything that prohibits one from being a member of both parties simultaneously? Vote in both primaries…
State election laws, at least here in MI, will only give you the option of voting in one party’s primary. I have used this option myself, twice. Once in 2000 and again in 2016.
It depends on where you live. Here’s an explainer:
When I lived in Delaware County, PA, a Philly suburb, the Republicans were so dominant that they had enough register as Democrats they could choose the legally required minority member of the county commission. So this sort of thing is not unprecendented.
On the other hand the tactic has been used to help choose the most extreme candidate in a close district hoping they will lose the general. Helping them choose a moderate may result in that moderate getting elected. Moderate Republicans have generally bent their knee (or spine) when push comes to shove. So I cannot advocate this.
My state has top-two open primaries and it isn’t even actually possible to register a party affiliation.
In subsequent primaries the MAGA candidate will get the most votes and the rest of the votes will be split among a group including one Republican candidate and at least five former Democrats.
I don’t think it would make enough of an impact to run the risk of being hauled before a lustration tribunal by a future provisional government.
In Washington State there is one and only one primary ballot. You can only get one vote. There is a Republican and a Democrat section, and you can only choose one.
Here is a sample presidential primary ballot:
So let’s say I wanted to advocate Chris Christie for the nomination, I could have done so, but not while also giving support to Joe Biden. I felt that supporting Biden was more important, so that’s what I did. I could have chosen to vote for Christie (or someone else other than Trump on the Republican side) in the primary and then voted for Biden (well, in this case Harris) in the general election.
Our local state primaries are more interesting. You vote for your preference in any election, and they aren’t separated. So let’s say you are voting for Attorney General, there will be Republicans, Democrats, third party, independents, etc. Each will have a little notification saying what party they are running for, but it’s all one list. In the general election, whoever the top two candidates are from the primary will run against each other. That does mean you might have two candidates running against each other in the same party, and so the primary result might guarantee that a particular party is going to hold a position, so that shows how important our primary vote is. I actually like it that way.
The only states other than Washington to use this approach are California and Nebraska.
In Colorado, if you register for a non-major party, you’ll receive both the (D) and (R) primary ballot with clear instructions that you can only vote ONE of the two.
I have used it… strategically, as I’m not registered to the major parties, although given the overwhelming evidence of, dare I say it, outright evil and corruption in (R) circles I haven’t voted for a (R) candidate in the actual election since the McCain era, when there were still some principled and skilled Republicans at least on the semi-local level to consider.
California is an “open primary” state except for Presidential nominations, and I think that is an exception only because somebody pointed out when the open primary began (2000, I think) that Republican Party rules required that only Republican votes can be counted in order for a primary to count; as a compromise, there were two vote totals released - the “straw poll,” which counted all votes, and the “Republican Primary,” which counted only registered Republicans. Starting in 2004, you only got the Presidential primary ballot for your party, and the open ballot for all other races.
Note that if you are not registered for a particular party in California, three parties - I want to say the Democratic, Green, and Peach & Freedom parties - allow you to vote in their party’s Presidential primary pretty much on the spot.
I have long voted in the Texas Republican primaries, under the thinking that I’m going to vote for the Democrat no matter what (unless the Republican is Jason Villalba; he’s one of the sane Republicans), so I should at least cast my vote for the least insane Republican on the primary ballots. Kind of like getting more bang for my voting buck, and around here at least, casting my vote that actually counts in the Republican primary for many statewide agencies, since the Democrat is unlikely to actually win, so vote in the primary for the Republican I dislike the least.
Michigan gives a third choice: a ballot not participating in the primary. There are a lot of smaller, local issues that aren’t related to a primary that one can vote upon if one doesn’t affiliate with either of the two sucky parties.
Virginia has an open primary (i.e., when you go to vote you just tell them which ballot you want). In 2012, you actually had to sign this document saying that you would support whoever the Republican candidate for president was before you got a Republican ballot. I think it was from the RNC, but not sure because it was a while ago.
Anyways, it pissed me off. Even if it wasn’t legally binding, like you wouldn’t get in trouble if you later voted for some other candidate, it just cheapens the whole idea of giving your word and signing your name to something. You shouldn’t have to pledge support to a candidate in the future in order to cast your vote for a (possibly) different candidate.
My friends convinced me that I could interpret the word “support” loosely. That even if I didn’t vote for a candidate, if I obeyed the law under them and respected their authority that’s being supportive. So I did that. But more than a decade has passed and that still rubs me the wrong way that I had to sign that document.
Just think of it this way… You signed the document but lied to them, because they lie with every other breath, and you just treated them the way they treat others.