Advocates of letting independent voters vote in partisan primaries constantly say that independents are moderates, and letting independents vote in partisan primaries helps elect moderates. Research overwhelmingly rebuts this assumption. Yet another example is the roll call vote of March 9 on HR 6968, to ban oil imports from Russia. It passed with only 17 “no” votes. The “no” votes came from these members of Congress: Andy Biggs (Arizona), Dan Bishop (North Carolina), Lauren Boebert (Colorado), Cori Bush (Missouri), Madison Cawthorn (North Carolina), Scott Des Larlais (Tennessee), Matt Gaetz (Florida), Louis Gohmert (Texas), Paul Gosar (Arizona), Marjorie Taylor Greene (Georgia), Glenn Grothman (Wisconsin), Clay Higgins (Louisiana), Thomas Massie (Kentucky), Ilhan Omar (Minnesota), Bill Posey (Florida), Chip Roy (Texas), and Tom Tiffany (Wisconsin).

Only three of these seventeen are from states with closed primaries. This shows once again that there is no correlation between type of primary, and what kind of person gets elected.

Shelley Lenz, the Democratic Party nominee for Governor of North Dakota in 2020, will run as an independent candidate for the State Senate this year. See this story.

North Dakota has very difficult ballot access for minor party and independent candidates for state legislature. The minor party requirement is so difficult, no minor party nominee for legislature has been able to qualify since 1976. The law does not allow minor parties to nominate for legislature unless approximately 11% of all the primary voters choose the minor party’s primary ballot.

The independent candidate procedures are also difficult. Independents need a petition of 300 signatures, which represents approximately 4% of the number of voters who voted for president in the typical legislative district in 2020. Very few independent candidates for the legislature qualify. In 2018 and also in 2020, only one did so.

On March 18, the Alaska bill that eases the definition of a qualified party passed the Senate Judiciary Committee. Existing law requires a party to have registration equal to 3% of the last vote cast, which is now 10,821. The bill changes this to exactly 5,000 registered members. The bill also says that after each census (starting with 2030) the number of registered voters will be increased by the percentage at which the state grew since the last census, rounded to the nearest 500. So if the bill becomes law, perhaps starting in 2030 the requirement would increase to 5,500 or 6,000.