Lawsuit Opens Idaho’s Closed Primary Issue Again

By Jill Kuraitis, 4-14-08

The Idaho Republican party is sounding the alarm bell again with a lawsuit to close Idaho election primaries. 

The suit was filed in federal court Friday against Republican Secretary of State Ben Ysursa.  It asks for an injunction against Ysursa and the state, and to compel the implementation of a closed primary system.

“The party presently has expressed its choice to implement closed primary elections, and we have taken concrete action to carry out these wishes,” said Sidney Smith, Executive Director of the Idaho Republican Party.  “We hope this suit will move quickly through the process and lead to an effective structure that respects the rights of our party members.”

The idealogical clash rings loud between Democrats and Republicans, but also between two wings of the Idaho Republican party.  Democrats generally favor open primaries; the Republican caucus has been split.  But with the lawsuit, the group which has been ringing the bell for closing primaries has drowned out the other.

Keith Allred, who leads The Common Interest, a nonpartisan good-government group, and who is highly regarded by members of both parties, tried his best this legislative session to broker a compromise “modified closed primary,” but nothing was settled in the end.

Tutorial
In Idaho’s current system, party affiliation is not declared when registering, and anyone can choose to vote in either the Republican or Democratic primary. In a closed primary system, voters register as members of a given party or as independents. Voters can then vote only in their party’s primary and independents, about one-third of Idaho voters, are not allowed to vote in primaries at all. Much of the motivation for this proposal is a concern that committed members of a rival party cross over to vote in the other party’s primary in order to elect a more extreme candidate who will be easier for their own party’s candidate to defeat in the general election.

According to Allred’s research, open primaries produce significantly more representative winners than closed primaries. Specifically, the evidence indicates conclusively that in states with open primary systems the winners of Congressional seats are significantly more ideologically representative of their districts than the winners in states with closed primary systems. One study is here.

But Allred has been working with a body of research which shows “there is a version of primaries that produces elected officials who are substantially more representative even than those produced by open primary systems. In states with modified closed primaries, like in states with fully closed primaries, voters must register as members of major political parties or as independents and those who are registered as members of a given party can only vote in primaries for their party. Unlike in fully-closed primary states, however, independents in modified close primaries can choose to vote in whichever primary they want.”

Assuming this research bears out, the Republican’s lawsuit for simple closed primaries makes sense for its members. A modified system which produces the most representative elected officials – the most accurate reflection of the voters themselves, would almost certainly not favor Republicans in Idaho, despite their current dominance. Since there is no party registration, it’s impossible to know the voting demographics accurately, but Democrats and Independents together make up a larger voting block than Republicans.

The Republicans’ suit would required the Secretary of State’s elections function to re-register all Idaho voters, an expensive and time-consuming job for which Ysursa is not eager. During the 2007 legislative session, he was very clear he thought the whole idea was daft, and he particularly objected to the lack of money and staff to do party registration missing from that year’s bill.

The current lawsuit doesn’t stipulate who pays for or carries out the administration of that tall order, either.  Asked about it, Sid Smith emailed New West, “The lawsuit does not specify who will pay for party registration because we wanted to keep it narrowly focused.  We were concerned that the court would consider that a legislative question (something for the legislature, not a federal court to decide), and use that as a reason to dismiss the case.”

In an interview with New West, Ysursa said the lawsuit was “deja vu all over again” and that he expected the state attorney general, Lawrence Wasden, to be able to defend it successfully. Citing a case from Washington state recently decided by the U.S. Supreme Court which preserved open primaries there, he pointed out that Idaho has never had closed primaries and that the system “isn’t broken, so why fix it?”

“It’s antithesis to the typical Idaho voter to ask them to go on the record with their party affiliation,” he said.

Ysursa introduced a bill this year which would have required a call-for ballot, meaning voters would ask for one ballot or the other at the polls, making their party preference a matter of public record.  That bill and Allred’s modified closed-primary measures died in the House.  “I was portraying my bill as the lesser of two evils, but as far as I could see we had two stinkers, and I said so to legislators.”

Acknowledging that party registration would provide public names and addresses and mailing lists, Ysursa was concerned about how those lists would be used in identifing voters.  “Republicans have constantly had this internal struggle over ‘are you Republican enough? conservative enough’?”

“I think the supporters of this idea are wrong - if you poke voters in the eye during the primary, why would you think they’ll vote for you in the general?”