On March 27, Missouri HB 26 passed a procedural vote in the House, by a vote of 78-72. It changes Missouri from an open primary state to a closed primary state. It still hasn’t passed the House on final reading. There was to have been a vote on April 2, but it was postponed.

Currently the Missouri voter registration form does not ask applicants to choose a party. The bill would place a question about political party affiliation on the form. It also provides that no one can vote in a party primary unless he or she has been a registered member of that party for at least 23 weeks before the primary.

The bill is flawed in several ways. It does not permit a party to nominate anyone who has not been a member for 23 weeks, but such laws cannot be applied to new parties, according to every court that has considered the matter. It isn’t fair to limit a new party to nominating only those people who had been members, at a point before the party was qualified. New parties don’t submit their petitions until the end of July.

Also the bill doesn’t acknowledge that the U.S. Supreme Court has said that parties that want independents to vote in their primaries have a right to make that decision. Finally, the bill doesn’t let voters register into an unqualified party.