Three million voters can’t cast ballots in Super Tuesday states
by Chad Selweski
When voters head to the polls tomorrow for the big Super Tuesday showdown, more than 3 million of their friends and family members will be forced to stay home, unable by law to cast a ballot.
Why? Because they are independent voters, not affiliated with either political party, living in states with closed primaries.
Five states participating in the presidential primary process on Tuesday – Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Oklahoma and Wyoming (Democrats in Wyoming vote in April) – limit primaries so that only declared Democrats can vote for Democratic candidates and only registered Republicans can vote for GOP candidates. Those states combined have more than 3 million independent voters who are mere spectators in a rigged process.
Independents are brushed aside, told to wait until November. But surely many independents who lean toward the Democrats abhor the idea of socialist Bernie Sanders winning his party’s nomination. They want to have a say in the primary election outcome. And many independents who lean Republican are simply horrified at the thought of narcissist Donald Trump securing his party’s nomination. But those independents are shut out of the process.
What’s more, the independents cannot participate but they must help pay for the hundreds of millions of tax dollars it costs for state governments to hold these primary elections for the two parties.
Largest group kept out of the process
The nonaligned voters are the largest voting bloc in America — about 40 percent of the electorate – larger than the number of Democrats or Republicans. Yet, in many states, independent voters cannot cast a ballot in a primary election unless they surrender their unaffiliated status and join a party. This is democracy?
Of course, the unfairness of the “wait till November” rule is even more egregious in primaries for congressional seats. By November, House races run in gerrymandered congressional districts are over. Of the 435 seats up for grabs, estimates indicate as few as 20 are in districts that will be competitive in the 2016 general election.
Overall, 27 states, a majority, uphold some form of a closed presidential primary. It’s important for Michigan voters to understand that the definition of “closed” is a strict one. Our primary, slated for March 8, is considered an open primary though no ticket-splitting is allowed, only a straight, party-line vote.
A group known as the Independent Voter Project is waging an ongoing court fight to end the closed primary system in New Jersey. After losing at the lower levels of the federal court system, the IVP has filed legal briefs hoping to convince the U.S. Supreme Court to hear their case.
Judges say don’t ‘pry open’ voting process
In New Jersey, nearly half of voters have chosen not to affiliate with any political party, but the Third Circuit Court of Appeals described the IVP effort as an attempt by independents to “pry open” New Jersey’s voting process. Interesting choice of words.
What the appellate judges failed to acknowledge is that in the Garden State, where primary turnout is often in the single digits, the unaffiliated voters have helped pay a $100 million price tag over the past 12 years for partisan primary elections in which they are not allowed in the door.
In an era of increasing emphasis on voter IDs, a person’s voter registration card in closed primary states determines whether they can vote in a primary and how they can vote in that primary.
Chad Selweski is a freelance writer and blogger with a centrist point of view from suburban Detroit, Macomb County (population 870,000), home of the “Reagan Democrats.” Selweski worked as the political reporter for The Macomb Daily for 30 years. This is cross posted from his blog Politically Speaking.
graphic via shutterstock.com