Posted on 03/06/2014 6:55:52 AM PST by A'elian' nation
Not the case here in PA. Primaries are closed, but the state monitors and runs the elections (as I understand it).
Also, you don't have to wait a year to vote or anything like that. You do have to register in advance of the election (they close registration 30 days before).
Open primaries are like gay marriage. Some states move to open primaries. None ever go back. It's "progress."
That’s a good way to run things. Here’s proof positive it’s a good way: Arlen Specter hated it so much he pointed at it as the reason he jumped back to the Rats.
Better still, he lost. Six months as a lame duck for “Mr. Scottish Law,” “Mr. ‘Super-Duper Precedent’” was delicious to me. I danced on his political grave.
"Like."
“A closed primary won’t change that. “
So a closed primary won’t change anything, yet half the country is on an open system and half are closed. If there is no net result difference with either one then why aren’t they all closed or all open?
Obviously half the states feel there is an advantage to their system. And why don’t they change with changing times as you mentioned about how it was way back when?
In California, a party can’t even run a candidate in the general election.
Everyone is in one big primary and the top two run in the general.
More “progress.”
Early voting and mail in voting are other stupid ideas that progressives like.
The complaint one usually hears is that open presidential primaries in states Republicans will never carry give an advantage to more moderate or liberal Republicans. There's something to be said for that theory. It's also a variant of the Carter-Clinton-era complaint of liberal Democrats that the Super Tuesday primaries in Southern that Democrats usually lost hurt the more liberal contenders who were the choice of party activists.
Open primaries were a good idea when the parties weren't so ideologically divided. If there was a chance that Democrats might actually nominate the more conservative candidate, it was a good idea to be free to help that candidate win his primary. That rationale doesn't exist nowadays, but if one party's primary were confined to paid-up dues-paying members of a political party, the candidates chosen wouldn't be as representative of the constituency as a whole and would be likely to lose the general election.
“Open primaries were a good idea when the parties weren’t so ideologically divided.”
That is well stated and has been my understanding as well. I really don’t see the advantage of open primaries the more vituperative and divided our politics have become.
Mississisppi is facing thie dilemma right now. While the nation is focused on the McDaniel tea party Senate challenge to Thad Cochran, the Palazzi House race has become interesting since one-time democrat and previous office holder, now turned republican, Gene Taylor, has entered the republican primary against Palazzi.
http://yallpolitics.com/index.php/yp/post/37203/
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