Wait… how does the Civil Rights Act not run head onto the whole ‘Freedom of Association’ thing, here? Aren’t political parties just as free to determine who participates in them as the Boy Scouts are to prohibit gays from joining or Augusta National is to keep women out?
Gays are not protected under the Civil Rights Act, otherwise the Boy Scouts would not be able to exclude them from their meetings in areas of public accomodation. The Boy Scouts cannot, for example, decide to exclude black people and still hope to use areas of public accomodation.
ETA: Neither is gender, I believe.
Ahh… it’s the area of public accomodation that’s in question. Thanks.
I would think. But I’m just reading the statute, I don’t actually know anything about this area of law.
No, it’s all BobT’s fault. He’s the one who said “While it’s been mentioned earlier that political parties are private bodies, they don’t have all the First Amendment rights that others have.” and followed that with an apparent illustration, that “A political party cannot restrict who votes in its primary on the basis of race or gender or age, for example.”
This is one of those compact statements that contain so many wrong or irrelevant assumptions that they are hard to take apart briefly.
Who says political parties don’t have all First Amendment rights? If they don’t, why don’t they? How are they different from other private bodies? Is discrimination in who is allowed to vote an example of a loss of a First Amendment right? Isn’t that parallel to the restrictions placed on other private bodies, making political parties not special? Do First Amendment rights protect the speaker from the law if crimes are committed?
The whole mishmash that BobT’s incoherent posting needs to be taken apart and refuted thread by thread. The fact that some of his examples fall under Civil Rights Law instead of the constitution is technically correct, but doesn’t seem to me to get at any the issues raised since parties have to follow both just as private parties do.
Parties must draw from the pool of registered voters in a state, the two main (and other lesser if any parties) can sometimes restrict to only those who have registered for that party. Parties don’t have the ability to discriminate in any other way. It’s not a First Amendment Rights issue; it’s a matter of legal membership.
I don’t really doubt these assertions, but I’d like to know the basis for them. Like I said, I’m no expert here, but what part of the Civil Rights Act do you think applies to political parties? If I form the KKK party, are you saying I have to accept non-white members?
In New York State, party registration is maintained by the county clerks office. You walk in, prove you live in the area and are eligible to vote, and fill out a card. Nothing else is necessary. The party never meets you or has any interaction with you at all, except that your name is on a list to send stuff to. How could they reject you under any basis?
In New York, party registration must be done a month before the primary, IIRC. In other states you can walk into a polling station and fill out a registration card on the spot to vote in a primary. Would somebody say: no, you can’t vote because we don’t like Dopers? Logistically impossible and politically even more impossible. Being a member of a political party in the U.S. does not carry the connotations of membership found in other countries. No dues, no meetings, no requirements, no tasks. Just a checkmark on a sheet of paper to indicate which sets of primaries you can vote in. No party has control over that. If you’re eligible to vote you can register for a party. I know of no exceptions (although obviously you can be a member of only one party at a time.)
I don’t think this is accurate – political parties did exist. In England, for example, the Tories & Whigs had been around for about a hundred years by the time of the American Revolution.
You could say that political parties didn’t exist in America. But even that is stretching it. While political parties didn’t exist as formal bodies, they certainly existed in practice. There were arguments between the agrarian, Jeffersonian democrats vs. the mercantile, Hamilton Federalists way back then. Some of those arguments, and the compromises they agreed on, are still shown in the US Constitution.
It’s not specifically enumerated, but doesn’t the requirement that states have a republican form of government kind of cover that? (The thing about Senators being appointed was explicit, so that won’t be a fair comparison.)
And then, “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.”
Boy, is my face red. I wish a state would abandon a popular election just to rile up all those electoral college haters out there.
That says that the state’s own government must be of republican form. There may not, for instance, be a hereditary monarchy set up to govern Delaware. Also, a republican form of government does not require direct election of a head of of government. There are many republics in which heads of state and/or government are chosen by means other than direct election - Germany for instance. In fact, it’s mildly curious that the states are so uniform - the admonition about a republican form of government gives them much more latitude than they choose to exercise. This subject’s been discussed here also.
Well, yeah, I was talking about the United States. And they knew about parties, which they called factions. The point is that they hated factions. The entire Constitution is written to minimize the potential mischief caused by factions. The ideal was supposed to be electing disinterested patriotic-minded gentlemen who put nothing but the best prospects for the entire country to the fore. Presidents were supposed to be like Washington, by acclimation the best man for the job. He was thoroughly disgusted by the partisan bickering of Jefferson and Hamilton in his cabinet.
I repeat, there is nothing in the Constitution about political parties. That’s because they hadn’t formally formed at the time and they did everything they could to keep that from happening. They might as well have tried holding back the tide, but that was their specific intent.