KY League of Women Voters supports open primaries; time to make this change for fairness

The League of Women Voters of Kentucky has offi­cial­ly adopt­ed the fol­low­ing posi­tion: “LWVKY sup­ports a Kentucky pri­ma­ry elec­tion sys­tem that allows those vot­ers reg­is­tered as Independent/Other to par­tic­i­pate in state-fund­ed par­ti­san primaries.” 

Secretary of State Michael Adams has pre­vi­ous­ly sup­port­ed open pri­maries here.

Kentucky is one of only 16 states that have total­ly closed pri­maries, elec­tions dur­ing which only reg­is­tered Republicans or Democrats may vote, or for a can­di­date of anoth­er par­ty if the vot­er is reg­is­tered with­in that par­ty, such as Libertarian, Green, etc.

The Kentucky law regard­ing pri­ma­ry vot­ing is con­tain­ing in KRS 116.055 which states: “No per­son shall be allowed to vote for any par­ty can­di­dates or slates of can­di­dates oth­er than that of the par­ty of which he or she is a reg­is­tered mem­ber, except as pro­vid­ed in sub­para­graph 2. Of para­graph (b) of sub­sec­tion (1) of this sec­tion.”

Subparagraph (1)(b) 2 states: “A reg­is­tered inde­pen­dent, although an inde­pen­dent shall only vote in the pri­ma­ry of one (1) par­ty.  Such a per­son shall be reg­is­tered inde­pen­dent on December 31, imme­di­ate­ly pre­ced­ing the pri­ma­ry.”

It should be not­ed, how­ev­er, that inde­pen­dent vot­ers are allowed to vote in pri­maries for can­di­dates in all non­par­ti­san races (KRS 116.055 (4).

In Kentucky there are present­ly 358,336 inde­pen­dent vot­ers (sub­ject to change dai­ly) which rep­re­sents 10% of the eli­gi­ble vot­ers in the state.  Doesn’t it seem rea­son­able that any par­ty would be inter­est­ed in attract­ing even a por­tion of 10% of the elec­torate, a por­tion which, in a close elec­tion, could deter­mine the result?

While there are numer­ous rea­sons for allow­ing inde­pen­dents to vote in pri­maries, includ­ing the fact that these vot­ers also pay the same tax­es that sup­port the elec­tions, the LWV has list­ed a num­ber of argu­ments in favor of keep­ing pri­maries closed.  Let’s exam­ine those.

• Prevents Party Sabotage: There is too much room for trick­ery and chi­canery in open pri­maries – i.e. “strate­gic vot­ing.”  There is already strate­gic vot­ing since vot­ers are allowed to reg­is­ter with any par­ty they choose and can eas­i­ly reg­is­ter in a par­ty they don’t real­ly sup­port just in order to have influ­ence in that party’s selec­tions.  Further, giv­ing pri­ma­ry vote to inde­pen­dents sim­ply allows the vot­er – not the par­ty – deter­mine the val­ue of a can­di­date.  Further there are no gen­er­al­ly accept­ed evi­dence or stud­ies that sup­port this supposition.
• Maintains Party Identity: Party mem­bers should be allowed to choose the can­di­dates of their choice with­out vot­ers, not affil­i­at­ed with the par­ty, hav­ing input in the party’s nom­i­nee.  This sim­ply demon­strates that there is present­ly too much empha­sis on par­ty affil­i­a­tion with­out regard to the abil­i­ties or qual­i­fi­ca­tions of a candidate.
• Maintains Trust in Election Process: Changing Kentucky’s Primary Election mod­el could weak­en vot­ers trust in the process, fuel­ing con­cerns that elec­tions are “rigged”.  These con­cerns are already ram­pant (although uni­ver­sal­ly unproven) and are mere­ly anoth­er aspect of the elec­tion process that must be con­stant­ly addressed.  Many peo­ple already feel that the elec­tions are “rigged” because the indi­vid­ual par­ties have too much influ­ence over who may vote.
• Limits Confusion for Voters: Voters and elec­tions offi­cials are accus­tomed to the cur­rent sys­tem.  So what?  Elections offi­cials are required to under­go train­ing before elec­tions and there is no rea­son why such train­ing would not include infor­ma­tion about any changes to the sys­tem.  It is also true that elec­tions process­es change fre­quent­ly.  A change to an open pri­ma­ry sys­tem would be no different.
• Less Expensive for Candidates: Candidates in closed pri­maries do not need to spend mon­ey to tar­get independent/Unaffiliated vot­ers.  This does not appear to be an inhibit­ing fac­tor in the oth­er 34 states which do not have closed pri­maries.  In fact, hav­ing open pri­maries might influ­ence all can­di­dates to try to appeal to a more mod­er­ate elec­torate, some­thing which is sore­ly  need­ed in pol­i­tics today when so much vit­ri­ol and ani­mos­i­ty seems to per­vade the polit­i­cal process and pre­vent the fab­ri­ca­tion of rea­son­able laws and reg­u­la­tions which are ben­e­fi­cial to every­one, rather than spe­cif­ic constituencies.

Since the reg­u­la­tions and laws in Kentucky regard­ing pri­ma­ry elec­tions are statutes, not a part of the Constitution, they can be changed through the pas­sage of new leg­is­la­tion.  Those who serve the Kentucky vot­er should under­stand that allow­ing inde­pen­dents to vote in pri­ma­ry elec­tions would be nei­ther and advan­tage nor dis­ad­van­tage to either par­ty and would most like­ly affect both par­ties equal­ly, and would con­cur­rent­ly allowed a large and grow­ing seg­ment of Kentucky vot­ers to par­tic­i­pate in a true demo­c­ra­t­ic process.