I confess my ignorance of the primary process. I’ve been learning a bit this year.
I assumed Democrats voted in Democratic primaries and Republicans voted in Republican primaries. Recently I heard that in Texas they have open primaries and republicans can vote in the democratic primary.
What’s the point of a rule like that? How many states do that? Doesn’t it allow the opposing party to vote for the candidate to vote for the person they think they can beat? I heard rumors about that in Texas and contributing to Hillary’s win.
Is that a realistic concern. I just don’t see the reason for allowing the opposing party to influence the outcome.
Party affiliation is not a very well defined thing in the US. You don’t join anything, you don’t attend meetings, there’s little to do except vote in the primaries. Many states hold open primaries because there’s no real way of telling who is in what party except by who they voted for in the last primary.
I’ve voted in both primaries over time, and I intend to vote for whichever one I find more interesting to me in the future. I don’t really consider myself a member of either party.
Many people distrust “closed primaries”. They require you to declare a party affiliation when you register to vote, and a lot of people don’t like to do that. It’s one thing to tell your friends or message board buddies that you’re a Democrat, but something else to declare it to an officer of the state at the time of voter registration. It feels wrong, and a lot of people won’t do it. Thenceforward, they are frozen out of voting in primaries, and nobody likes low-turnout elections.
Yes, but this effect is mitigated in states that couple the presidential primary to the primary for Congress (as does Texas), and for state and local offices if they are contested in the presidential election year. In such a primary, you can only cast a “spoiler vote” if you aren’t interested in any of the contests within your party. This reduces, but does not eliminate, spoiler voting.
Really? It seems to me that since the primaries are about the party choosing which candidate they might want it to be party members. I can understand allowing those registered as independents because you might want to know who appeals to them as well.
I guess I’m dense. What does that mean? The two party primaries are held on the same day and you can only vote once? So, if you vote for McCain then you’ve voted and can’t vote for a Dem? Is that it?
That is the way it works in Michigan, anyway. That is part of the problem with having a “do over” for just the Democratic ticket. Everyone will be voting on that one side, which will likely skew the results (at least to some extent) toward whomever the state Republicans would like to see up against their candidate. Not a terribly effective way to see what those that are Democrats want, but works quite well from the standpoint of those that want to see a Democratic loss.
Right. Now that the republican candidate is decided then there should be a Dems and Independent only primary for MI. If they can’t do that then don’t have one.
The problem with allowing independents to vote in primaries is that this leaves people with no incentive to register for a party. Since independents can vote in either primary, and party members can only vote for their own party, why register with a party?
As I’ve argued in other threads, I believe all state-run party primaries–either for the presidency or for lesser office–are an abomination. Parties should make their own nominations, using processes of their own design, at their own expense. Given, however, that we’re stuck with state-run primaries for the foreseeable future, I’m trying to explain the advantages and disadvantages of each format. Open primaries=higher turn-out and no declaration of party membership upon registration, closed primaries=no spoiler voting. Semi-closed primaries (independents can vote either way) are tantamount to open primaries because they disincent partisan registration.
In Illinois, we had a presidential primary (both parties) on February 5. At that primary, we also nominated candidates for the House, Senate, and state legislature. McCain was fairly inevitable as the Republican nominee by that time, so Republicans, in theory, could have cast “spoiler votes” for Hillary. But there were also Republican contests for the U.S. Senate and in several House and legislative districts. To vote for Hillary, you had to ask for a Democratic ballot, and forego the possibility of voting in the Republican primary for the lesser offices as well as the presidency. This makes spoiler voting less attractive.
In some states, the presidential primary is de-coupled from the Congressional primary. New York, for example, held its presidential primary in February and won’t hold its Congressional primary until September. This makes spoiler voting more of a problem when one party’s presidential race is decided.