On December 4, the Tennessee Republican Party Executive Committee will vote on whether to endorse closed primaries for Tennessee. See this story. Thanks to Nancy Hanks for the link. Presumably, if the party backs the idea, the party would try to obtain closed primaries by supporting a bill in the state legislature, rather than suing. The Tennessee Republican Party has a majority in both houses of the legislature.
Tennessee has never had registration by party. Most southern states have always had open primaries.
The Republicans will be wasting their time trying to get the legislature to change the law.
With majorities in their legislatures, the Idaho Republicans and the South Carolina Republicans tried for years to get closed primaries. Both parties finally filed lawsuits.
Politicians don’t like to change the system under which they were elected to office.
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For the unaware – the 1964 Elephant Goldwater for Prez shocked the old southern State regimes into having some major [white] Elephants versus [black] Donkeys in elections since 1964.
Once again — sorry to be repetitive– BUT —
NO mention in the U.S.A. Constitution of fractional parts of ALL Electors-Voters (aka factions – X percent of ALL Electors-Voters) in each State of the Union having ANY power of such factions to put THEIR faction candidates on the general election ballots.
P.R. and App.V.
EQUAL nominating petitions for ALL candidates for the same office in the same area in each NEW election.
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Why not go with a caucus system and bypass the primaries. I know the courts have said states must pay for primaries, but why should my tax dollars support a primary where I can’t vote. In a closed primary the Independents seem get left out depending on how the law is written.
As I recall, Tennessee requires parties to nominate by primary for the offices of governor, state legislature, and Congress. But, for years, the parties have used only primaries for all partisan offices.
If a party nominates by convention or caucus, and all the candidates for a certain office run under the same party label, grassroots voters miss out on voting for that office.
The 8th circuit said that, when the state mandates that parties hold primaries, the parties cannot be required to pay for those primaries. The state pays for them by default.
The US Supreme Court has empowered parties to invite independents to vote in their primaries (Tashjian v. Republican Party of Connecticut).
Unless the state prohibits it, a party may also invite members of opposing parties to vote in its primaries– which the Tennessee Republicans obviously won’t do (Clingman v. Beaver).