Arkansas has always had open primaries since primaries first began early in the 20th century. However, on June 8, 2024, the state Republican convention voted to close Republican primaries, so that only registered Republicans can vote. However, the state chair and the state executive committee of the Republican Party then took the position that the convention action is void, because proper notice hadn’t been given in advance of the convention about that vote.
On August 26, some Republican state convention delegates sued the party’s State Chair and State Executive Committee in federal court, to force those officers to accept the decision of the state convention. The lawsuit also sues the Secretary of State. Lancaster v Thurston, e.d., 2:24cv-161.
Here is the Complaint, which attaches the party rules to establish that the state convention is the ultimate authority in party governance.
I never understood support for open elections (or semi-closed elections) in the first place. After all, surely it should be exclusively the members of a party who decide which candidate will represent their party in the election? And it isn’t exactly difficult to change ones party registration in most states, should you desperately want a say in that process. But I also don’t have sufficiently strong feelings on the matter to agonize about it much.
@Nuña,
Why should Arkansas (or any other State) maintain records of the political beliefs of its citizens, or regulate or subsidize their political activities?
Party registration is not really a record of political beliefs though. I can register as a Democrat to try and influence the Democratic primary, but that doesn’t mean I share any of the party’s values. It just makes me put in the effort of registering to vote in the Democratic primaries.
As a privacy concern, party registration records could be purged every cycle, or better yet every year.
But why even have political parties at all, if people registered not registered with a party get to influence that party’s elections?
And the government shouldn’t be subsidizing any party or candidate’s activities.
Certainly, only party members of the winning party should pick officeholders. But there’s no need for the government to maintain anything except the record of which party the voter stood with after the deadline for moving from party to party in the caucus room on election night that year.
It seems premature for parties to announce who their officeholders might be should they win an election, but that should be up to each party. No party of mine would ever do that ahead of seeing who would end up standing with us on election night at the caucus.
Who would ever be foolish enough to vote for a party that hadn’t even announced it’s candidate for each office ahead of the election?
Vote now and find out who you voted for later… Fruit for an SNL sketch – back when those were still funny – but no way to hold elections in a republic – or any other kind of representative democracy.
The officeholders would be easily replaceable throughout the year as the party sees fit, with or without cause. They could swap in and out as time in their more important pursuits allows. Their individual identity would be of no consequence.
Exactly: who would ever be foolish enough to vote for a party that did so? It would make for a good comedy sketch, but nothing more than that.
If people are to be represented by individuals – no matter how temporary – then they will necessarily care about their representatives’ individual identities. Even more so, if they are also to vote for how they are represented.
Letting the faceless and unaccountable party swap out those individual representatives at its discretion, will only aggravate the problems with representative democracy.
If you want to get rid of people voting for individual politicians, then you will either need to replace representative democracy with direct – i.e. real – democracy, where people vote for policies, or – better yet – abandon the concept of government altogether.
Everyone, and there would be nothing foolish about it. The individuals could be switched out as often as needed, even several times a day.
Accountability would be based on the elected officers being primarily known in the community through their many nongovernmental roles, which are far more important.