On March 5, Maine State Senator Roger Katz (R-Augusta) introduced LD 744, to let independent voters vote in any party’s primary ballot. The bill has nine co-sponsors and is pending in the Joint Committee on Veterans and Legal Affairs. Here is a copy of the bill, which is only three sentences long. The bill does not say that independent voters can sign a petition to get a candidate on a primary ballot.
Other states that tell parties they must let independents vote in their primaries, even if those independents don’t join the party on primary day, include Arizona, Massachusetts, and Nebraska. Currently, any Maine voter can join a qualified party on primary election day and vote in its primary. Thanks to Thomas MacMillan for the news.
Maine law already allows for parties to choose if they want to open up their primaries to unenrolled voters, if the party chooses to do so. None of the established parties have ever chosen to do this.
When the idea of allowing parties the ability to open up their primary petitioning process in the same manner was brought up, the Veterans and Legal Affairs committee seemed resistant to the idea.
Between this reluctance, and the point Richard made in the article above that effectively, unenrolled voters can do this already by changing their registration on the day of the primaries, I suspect this bill will similarly go nowhere.
Myself, I think the parties themselves should keep the right to choose if they want to open up their primaries or not.
NO primaries.
ONE election day.
EQUAL nominating petitions to get SERIOUS candidates.
P.R. and nonpartisan App.V.