Posted on 07/11/2007 2:57:14 PM PDT by Delphinium
Today July 11, 2007 71 members of the Idaho Republican Party, including a number of members of the Idaho Republican Party State Central Committee and Executive Committee filed suit in the U. S. Federal Court in Boise Idaho to require the State of Idaho and its Chief Election Officer, Ben Ysursa, Idaho Secretary of State to honor the Rule adopted by the Idaho Republican Party on June 2, 2007.
Idahoans are still entitled to the basic protections and rights offered by the U.S. Constitution 220 years ago, including the right of association under the First Amendment. It is our intent to ask the court to restore those rights so that Idaho Republicans may stand together and pick their own nominees for political office, just as Idaho Democrats are allowed to stand together and pick their nominee for U.S. president.
The complete documentation including the Complaint and other corresponding documents can be found on file with the U.S Federal Court in Boise, Idaho as Beck et al V. Ysursa Case number: 1:07-cv-229.
The documents may also be found on our Blog later today: http://grassrootsidgop.wordpress.com/
Here we go.
If you want to have free association, fine, have a massive straw poll, if you like, or hold your primary in some other fashion, but if you want one administered by the state, then it should be open.
After his immigration vote, Larry Craig may be vulnerable to a primary challenge. Presumably a closed primary would strengthen the position of conservative challenger, because democratic supporters couldn't cross-over to support Craig.
My question for Idaho freepers is this: What is the current practice for primaries in the state? The article makes it sound like Democrats already have a closed primary, but the state is resisting allowing the Republicans to do the same. If that is the case, it should be a fairly straightforward case of unequal treatment.
However, if the issue is whether the state or the party get to make rules for the primary election and the rules are applied equally to both parties, it is a much murkier issue.
Ok, then what's the primary for? And gosh, who won, if they already voted?
We want only Republicans to choose Idaho Republican candidates.
What about this primary makes it so that only Republicans can vote in it? Some list that the state maintains? Where do they get their details - does the Idaho Republican Party vet this list? If not, it's simply self identification anyway. Since the constitution vests self association in the people, and not the state, what constitutional argument can be made that the state should have any part of it?
Too many years of Democrats messing with our Republican primaries.
Right, that old excuse again. Then it turns to 'too many RINOs messing with our primaries.' Get out the vote with those you believe to most likely support who you want to win. It's this lovely thing called politics. The problem with the primary in Idaho, as a prime example, is voter apathy, as well as party apathy in getting the vote out. The midterms there were the lowest turnout in eight years - find engaging politicians, engage the voters, and gosh, perhaps it won't matter who many people who are on a state administered list as being 'democrat' vote, nor how many RINOs vote, because you'll be filling the poling locations with your supporters.
In the last primary here in Michigan, democrats were being encouraged to vote for RINO Joe Schwarz.
My response also said: then stop being lazy. If non-Republicans are having such an effect on your primary, then get out the voters most likely to support the conservative candidates. You also never addressed the core issue: any green, communist or democrat could simply tick the Republican square on the voter registration card, and you'd still be stuck with the same problem, getting far too few conservatives to care enough to get out to the polling places.
Last midterm was the lowest turnout in eight years, the last primary in a presidential year was the lowest turnout ever for a presidential year, and that's just as a percentage of registered voters. Get people registered, get them excited about the political process, and get them to the primaries, and your problem is solved.
I’ll be praying for you folks. Best wishes.
Precedent is on their side - we already fought this battle in CA and won.
I agree. Closed primaries and private methods go together. This is what the Libertarian Party does. (I’m not either a big L or little l libertarian.)
Why do you care if Idaho Republicans are sick of Democrats messing with their primaries, and have moved to finally bring it to an end?
The only people I know who like open primaries are total RINOs and Democrats.
The Washington "Grange" which is some antique Communist Farmers organization is very big on not allowing the GOP in Washington to run their own party.
The net has been the GOP going to a caucus system (which is the very definition of insider smoke filled room, unaccountable, Soviet-style decision making) yet we still run a primary which is a "beauty contest". That is it is not used to select Presidential delegates.
If there is a more screwed up system I've not seen it!
One can tell how important this is because the Donks are working overtime to defeat it.
History of the Blanket Primary in Washington
From 1890 (the first election after statehood) to 1907, candidates for partisan offices were nominated by party conventions or by petition. The laws in Washington at this time were similar to those of most other states.
In 1907, the state Legislature established a “direct primary” for partisan candidates of political parties for which at least one candidate received ten percent of the vote for a statewide office at the last general election (major political parties). Minor political parties continued to nominate their candidates at conventions. Separate ballots were printed for each party and voters “declared” party affiliation at the time of voting. This change was part of a series of “populist reforms” that were advocated in the early 1900’s throughout America as a remedy to perceived abuses by political party machines.
Some political scientists classify this form of nominating system as a “closed primary” because the voter is required to publicly declare party affiliation and receives the ballot of only one party at the primary. Others classify this as an “open primary” because voters do not declare party affiliation at the time they register to vote. Washington did not have voter registration in all areas of the state until 1934 and in, those areas where voters were registered, they were not required to state a political party at the time of registration. This style of open primary – with public declarations of party affiliation – is distinct from the style of open primary used in Wisconsin, Montana, and some other states where the voter receives a primary ballot for each major party and makes a private choice about which ballot to vote.
This open primary system – with some minor variations - was used in Washington until 1935. In 1921, the state Legislature adopted two new statutes affecting political parties and primary nominations. One of these regulated political party caucuses and conventions and the election of political party officers (Chapter 176, Laws of 1921). The other required voters to declare their political party affiliation when they registered to vote or at the time they voted at the primary and restricted voters to the ballot that party at the primary.
Opponents of these changes filed referendums against both new laws and collected enough signatures to have both measures appear on the general election ballot in 1922. The results of the election on the voter registration by party issue (Referendum Measure 14) was 60,593 in favor and 164,004 against. The vote on the party caucus and convention proposal (Referendum Measure 15) was 57,324 in favor and 140,299 against. As a consequence, neither measure became law.
In 1934, the Washington State Grange together with the state AFL-CIO and other allies proposed an Initiative to the Legislature, which would amend state law to allow: “all properly registered voters to vote for their choice at any primary election for any candidate for each office, regardless of political affiliation and without a declaration of political faith or adherence on the part of the voter.”
The petition campaign for this initiative was successful and the measure was presented to the 1935 session of the Legislature. The Legislature adopted the blanket primary proposal, which became Chapter 26, Laws of 1935. As a result, the measure was not referred to the voters at the subsequent general election. However, given the results for the referendum on party voter registration fourteen years earlier, the general expectation was that the blanket primary would have been adopted easily if the Legislature had failed to take any action on the petition.
The major political party leadership immediately challenged the constitutionality of the new blanket primary law in the state courts. In June of 1936, the State Supreme Court upheld the blanket primary statutes (Anderson v. Millikin) and the first blanket primary was held that fall. The state was successfully represented in this action by a young Assistant Attorney General, who was later elected to both the U. S. House of Representatives and the U. S. Senate. His name is Warren G. Magnuson.
In 1978, the blanket primary was again challenged in state courts by one of the major political parties. The arguments in this new challenge were based on U. S. Supreme Court rulings made after the decisions in the 1936 case. However, the State Supreme Court ruled that the newer cases all deal with primary laws that restricted participation and they could not be applied to a the blanket primary because it “encourages and facilitates participation” (Heavey v. Chapman). The Court also ruled that the political party had failed to establish that the blanket primary damaged the party.
Since 1936, there have been sporadic attempts in the state Legislature to replace the blanket primary system with closed or open primaries, but few of these proposals got past consideration by standing committees. In 1964, the Republican party recommended replacing the blanket primary with an open primary in its state platform and the Democratic party leadership made a similar proposal two years later. In 1977, a representative of the State Labor Council testified before the Legislature on behalf of an open primary law. Two years later (1979), hearings were held in the State Senate on alternatives to the blanket primary.
For many years, Washington was the only state with this unique nominating system for partisan offices. More recently, the blanket primary has been used in Alaska and, in a modified form, in Louisiana. In March 1996, the voters in California adopted an initiative – Proposition 198 – that replaced the closed primary nominating system in that state with a blanket primary. The U. S. Supreme Court invalidated the California initiative in 2001.
In 2003, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held Washington’s blanket primary system unconstitutional on the basis that it violated the political parties’ right of free association. In a blanket primary system, voters are not required to affiliate with a political party and may vote for any candidate on the ballot. The candidate from each political party who receives the most votes in the primary advances to the general election.
N .B. The Dimocrats in Idaho do NOT bother with primaries, they choose candidates in CAUCUS and then support liberals in the GOP primary. Hence the need to close the door.
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