Bill Crawford, a writer for the Mississippi Business Journal, predicts in this column that the legislature will pass a bill letting parties close their primaries. The Mississippi Business Journal is a weekly print publication and is on-line also, and is published in Jackson.

The Mississippi legislature customarily meets in the first three months of every calendar year. Changing the system in 2015 would be awkward, because Mississippi elects all its state officers in years before presidential election years, so 2015 is state election year in that state.