Eight South Carolina Representatives have introduced H3140, a bill to set up partisan registration in that state. The sponsors are Garry Smith (R-Simpsonville), Dan Hamilton (R-Taylors), Wendy Nanney (R-Greenville), Eric Bedingfield (R-Mauldin), James Harrison (R-Columbia), William Wylie (R-Simpsonville), Michael Pitts (R-Laurens), and Jim Merrill (R-Charleston).
In the last twenty years, the only two states that have added registration by party are Rhode Island and Utah.
Richard,
What is you opinion about this bill?
I have mixed feelings about registration by party. Having registration by party does provide valuable lists, and those lists can be especially valuable to minor parties, especially if the state prints the names of all the qualified parties on the voter registration form (as opposed to the states that just have one blank line for choice of party, and the voter writes in his or her choice).
Also when a state has registration by party, it is then possible for a state to define a qualified party on the basis of how many registrations it has. If it is a reasonable number, that can be a good deal for a minor party, because then it is freed from necessarily always having to poll some percentage of the vote for a statewide office. Sometimes minor parties would rather not run candidates for statewide office, and instead focus on state legislative races or local partisan races.
On the other hand, when a state has registration by party, that makes it possible for the state to set up barriers for a minor party member to get on his or her own party’s primary ballot (if it nominates by primary). This is a big problem in Maine, Massachusetts, and New York.
Interesting that all eight of the SC bill’s sponsors are Republicans. There’s a movement within the SC Republican Party to close GOP primaries, but no lawsuit has been brought against the open primary law.
There have been past efforts to enact party registration in SC, and I seriously doubt that this bill will become law. The only former Confederate states that have party registration are Florida, Louisiana, and North Carolina. In the days of the one-party South, there really was no need for party registration.
The legislatures of Rhode Island and Utah deemed all voters already registered to be independents, and the only ones who had to re-register were those who wanted to affiliate with a party. Since independents in both states have their choice of either party’s primary, the largest number of registrants are independents.
There have also been recent unsuccessful attempts to enact party registration in Idaho and Virginia.
I live in South Carolina and I am a conservative Republican. We are very concerned that Democrats can cross over and vote in the GOP primary here, in New Hampshire, and in other states. It was this Democrat crossover vote that propelled John McCain to pluralities in the multi-candidate field. Coupled with winner-take-all delegate allocation rules, this allowed the national media to designate him as the “presumptive nominee” before most Republicans were able to cast a vote.
These same Democrats voting in our primary also supported Sen. Lindsey Graham and if they voted in down the ballot races, they voted for the weakest Republican.
The fact that all eight co-sponsors are Republicans is not any impediment to passage because there is a Republican majority in both houses of the SC legislature and Gov. Mark Sanford is a Republican too.