On Thursday, January 9, the Minnesota Supreme Court will hear De La Fuente v Simon, the case over the constitutionality of the law that says a political party has sole discretion to decide which candidates appear on its presidential primary ballot. All the briefs are in. They are from the Secretary of State and the Democratic Party (both in support of the law); and on the other side, the De La Fuente brief.

The Court invited the Minnesota Republican Party to file a brief, but it did not do so.

Election administrators need to have this case settled as soon as possible. The primary is on March 3. It is somewhat likely the decision will be out within a day or so of the oral argument.

Washington state representative Matt Shea was investigated last year by the Washington House of Representatives. Last month, a group hired by the legislature to analyze the behavior of Representative Shea released its report, which can be seen here.

The Report, prepared by the Rampart Group, concludes that Shea, as a leader of the Patriot Movement, planned, engaged in, and promoted a total of three armed conflicts of political violence against the U.S. government in three states outside the state of Washington. They were in Nevada, Oregon, and Idaho.

Representative Shea was first elected to the Washington house in 2008, the first year the top-two system was in effect in that state. He has been re-elected every two years since, always comfortably. In 2008 he faced two Republican and two Democratic opponents. In 2010 he had no opponents. In 2012 he had one Democratic opponent. In 2014 he had one Republican opponent. In 2016 and 2018 his only opponent was a single Democrat. Shea represents the Fourth District, which is east of Spokane.

There is a wave of activism in the United States that teaches that political parties, and partisan nominees, promote extreme policies, and that if only we didn’t have partisan nominations, office-holders would be more moderate. Reporters all over the country accept this idea. It is rare for any reporters to do any research. If they did, they would find that political science research has consistently debunked this idea. Detailed research shows that the two states with top-two systems, California and Washington, have among the most polarized state legislatures in the nation. Most of the other states with extreme members of Congress, and their own state legislatures, are open primary states. This is no accident. Political parties have an interest in nominating candidates who will reflect well on the party that nominates them. When parties have control over their nominating process, they are more likely to nominate people who cooperate with the other major party.

I do not suggest that Representative Shea would not have been elected and re-elected if Washington state had another type of primary, but I do suggest that if parties in Washington nominated by convention, as they did in all states in the 18th and 19th and early 20th centuries, Shea would not be a state legislator. The Washington Republican caucus in the House has expelled Shea and he has lost all his committee assignments.