A Stitch in Haste

Whoever wins, we ... win!

In a ruling that could eventually affect the statewide open-primary system, a federal judge last week barred independent voters from casting ballots in the Libertarian Party primary.

Arizona opened its primary elections in 2002, allowing independent voters and those belonging to parties not on the ballot to choose a party at the polls. The number of registered independents and unaffiliated voters in the state has since doubled, to about 28%.
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"Arizona's primary system has created a clear and present danger of a party's candidate being chosen by people other than party members," [a federal district judge] wrote in Arizona Libertarian Party v. Brewer (PDF - 10 pages). "A political party's right to choose its own nominees is a core associational activity and the mandatory inclusion of unaffiliated persons with the political party may seriously distort the party's decision."

Sounds about right, even though I have previously noted — and continue to emphasize — that political parties are a wholly extra-constitutional concept and have no "constitutional rights" per se.

This is a different fact pattern, however. It's not a ballot access question, but a First Amendment question. So long as party membership is open to all before the primary is held, then there is no logic in forcing a party to accept votes from non-members on the day of the primary. There is simply no rational basis for allowing open-primary voting, and many rational bases for opposing it — as this case demonstrates.

Meanwhile, the implications at the other end of the country — New Hampshire, which also has an open-primary system — and therefore for the major-party nominating process as it currently exists, are self-apparent. And the Supreme Court heard oral arguments yesterday in a challenge to Washington State's convoluted "top-two" system. Not exactly the same system, but the same core issues apply. Stay tuned.

(Full Disclosure: I should probably point out, yet again, that I am a small-l libertarian and registered independent; I have never been affiliated with any political party, and remain convinced that the best way to fight both the two-party system, and the party system generally, is by not being part of either.)