On November 19, oral arguments were held in Ravalli County Republican Central Committee v McCulloch, 6:14cv-58. The issue is Montana’s law requiring all qualified parties to nominate candidates for public office in open primaries. See this description, which suggests that U.S. District Court Judge Brian Morris is skeptical of the Republican Party’s case.
UPDATE: here is a second story, although it doesn’t have as much detail as the first story.
In Ravalli County, the county commission made a disastrous appointment of county treasurer. After the treasurer was forced out, the county was contemplating whether or not to hire a bounty hunter to track the former treasurer down, or whether it was worth the effort.
In the ensuing primary election, the treasurer was defeated in her attempt to be elected (she got around 5% of the vote), the incumbent county commissioners were beaten, and the state senator who they had also appointed was defeated by a state representative who had been elected.
Montana should eliminate partisan primaries, and eliminate the appointment of legislators.
They want our money just not our votes.
Being in the UK I was interested in this quote from the GOP lawyer
” …and that’s why Republicans should be allowed to close their primary elections to members only.”
That implies that the GOP regards voters identifying themselves as R are party members rather than just people who vote for them.
If they want to restrict primaries to party members only (which I would regard as someone who has paid dues and gets a membership card and has certain privileges e.g. to take up party positions such as Chair, Treasurer etc) then they should do that and not rely on the tax payer pay for what are essentially internal party elections.