CommentsGELFAND’S WORLD-It's a truism that political parties are independent, private organizations and enjoy the right to choose their own candidates their own way. It follows that if a state party doesn't want to allow independent voters to participate in a primary, that is its prerogative. At some level, I agree with this argument, since it involves the right to pick your own friends. It's related to the right peaceably to assemble that is stated in the First Amendment.
The converse position is that the choice of presidential candidates and ultimately the choice of who is elected president affects all Americans. According to this interpretation, the party nominating contests are equivalent to the semifinals, and the November election is the final. By rights, all lawful voters should have the ability to participate in the semifinals, and it's up to the political parties to provide that opportunity or be replaced by another form of choice.
I also agree with this point of view.
That's two contradictory views, and I agree with them both. I suspect that a lot of people suffer the same ambivalence, particularly those who refuse for whatever reason to register into a political party. And I think that there is a legitimate answer to the challenge, "If you want to vote in the party's primary, then why don't you register as a member of the party?" The answer is a little more complicated than the question suggests, as I shall discuss below.
If I had to pick just one of the two sides of this argument to support, I would choose the second one, meaning that there should be an accommodation for independent voters.
The reason this question is so important is that it affects primary contests such as the one happening in New York next week. In that election, lots of independent voters will be barred from choosing between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. It could have a significant effect. The same holds true for independents who would like to vote for Donald Trump or Ted Cruz. Lots of people, including a couple of the Trump daughters, will be disenfranchised.
By the way, even New Yorkers are beginning to complain about their state's primary eligibility rules. It's a weird system that allows for changes in party affiliation only within a window of opportunity. In practice, it resembles the system in which you can only change your health insurer during an open eligibility interval, and makes even less sense from a policy perspective.
The U.S. Constitution does not offer rules about political parties. George Washington became our first President without the benefit of political party membership. In fact, he disliked the whole idea, and it was only his successors who represented parties per se. It's been our way of life since Washington's retirement, and we have to live with it. This includes figuring out how to incorporate political parties -- of necessity private organizations -- into a system of elections that is, of necessity, a function of state government.
How do we sort out all the competing interests in order to create a legal structure for an acceptable primary system -- one that incorporates political parties in a rational kind of public-private partnership?
Can the state of California or any other state order a political party to allow independent voters to participate in its primary? That would seem to violate the principle that a political party is not a creation of the state, but rather exists as the creation and private tool of its membership. Conversely, could the state of California forbid a political party from allowing independent voters to participate in its primary? That would seem equally obtuse.
There are three ways around this dilemma. In one, the state provides for a system in which any registered voter can participate in any one primary. This violates the independence of the political parties, but is used by some states. This system allows for crossover voting, something that is viewed with horror and derision by political commentators, but doesn't seem to have a huge effect in practice. (OK, at least most of the time, and rare exceptions noted.) Another method used by a lot of states is to provide for closed primaries. In these, you have to be registered into the Republican Party to cast a vote in the Republican primary, or be registered Democratic to participate in the Democratic Party primary.
Neither of these approaches seems optimal to me. One is a bit chaotic, the other too strict. I think the method chosen by California is about as fair as we are going to get. We have something called a modified closed primary for the presidency, which is oddly named, but reasonably logical. The system allows an independent to vote in the primary of any political party that allows it.
The California Democratic Party expressly invites independent voters to participate in its primary. Since there are a lot of independent voters who support Democratic Party principles, this is a wise choice. I suspect that it also plays on the commonly understood psychological principle that once you vote in the Democratic primary, you are more likely to stick with your choice in the general election.
Curiously, in California the Republican Party keeps its primary closed. From their point of view, the pool of Republican Party primary voters is kept free of taint. I suspect that this will reduce Trump's vote total a little, but the Republicans will be guaranteed a turnout limited to what they consider to be real Republicans.
So what about the argument, commonly stated, that anybody who wants to vote in the Democratic Party primary should be required to register as a Democrat in advance? Is this a convincing argument, or something closer to a minor debating point?
My answer is that there are some compelling reasons for at least some of us to prefer to remain officially unaligned. Obviously part of it is just temperament. Some people aren't comfortable with swearing allegiance to an organization when they only agree with 80 percent of its platform. In my case, I found it increasingly uncomfortable being asked to support, even implicitly, some elected officials who were out-and-out crooks. We had a state senator who was convicted of a felony and fled the country. I don't remember a lot of high ranking Democrats who called for him to resign prior to his indictment.
Other people just aren't comfortable with extreme partisanship. One time, I noticed that the local Democratic Party organization had endorsed an obviously inadequate candidate for one of the Superior Court Judge positions. I asked one of my friends who had been on the endorsement committee, and he explained, "Well, we can't endorse a Republican."
"Why not?" was my answer, because there was a much better candidate who happened to be a Republican.
There is also the issue of the Superdelegates. The Democratic Party allows every member of the Democratic National Committee to attend the convention as a voting delegate. This is entirely illogical unless you happen to be among the (generally well to do) people who are on the DNC. It also provides for lots of elected officials who may or may not agree to follow the choice made by the primary voters of their states. The superdelegates (what a strange term!) are approximately one out of every five convention delegates.
Given all these conflicts, logical and emotional, it makes sense for some people to remain in the independent voter category. My political principles are largely identifiable with the Democratic side, but I feel a little better keeping my current registration status, which the state of California now refers to as No Party Preference.
I think that it makes sense for the California Democratic Party to open its ballot to such as I. We both benefit. If the Republican Party chooses to avoid this sort of complexity, that is their right under the principle that they are a private organization, as described in the first paragraph.
Notice that in adopting the modified closed primary system for president, the state of California is honoring the right of the parties to define their own boundaries, with the Democrats attempting to encompass both official Democrats and independents, while the Republicans circumscribe a narrower range of political philosophy. It's a murky compromise, as many things are in government and politics. It's a balance between competing principles, the principle of party autonomy and the principle that everyone should have a right to participate in choosing the next president. Since we don't have one perfect solution, we nip and tuck, squeeze and prod, until we've produced the least bad system.
There is one other reason for the state of California and its political parties to stay on board the modified closed primary system. As I stated above, there are a lot of No Party Preference voters. As of right now, the number is 24 percent. That's right -- a quarter of all registered voters have declined to register into one party or the other. Compare that with Republican Party registration, which is only 3 percent higher at 27.6 percent. Even the Democrats are not doing a whole lot better at 43.1 percent. You can find the numbers on the Secretary of State web page, including a near doubling of No Party voters over the past 16 years here.
As an aside, the figures presented in the Secretary of State link show something very interesting. The growth in No Party voters does not seem to be coming from a grand exodus of voters from the parties themselves. The Republicans have lost a few voters, but the Democrats have actually grown. The No Party group has grown by more than 2 million voters since 1999, suggesting that there is a remarkable cultural shift going on. Perhaps new registrants simply lack the traditional ties to labor unions or business that channeled earlier generations into the one party or the other.
The fact that a major fraction of all California voters refuse to join any of the political parties should be a clear message to the old guard. I will discuss the ramifications of this at another time. For the purposes of this discussion, suffice it to say that in California, we are well advised to provide a path for participation in the choice of our next president to all the people who check off the box saying No Political Party on their voter registration forms.
(Bob Gelfand writes on culture, science, and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected])
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