Let voters switch parties until April

A recent elec­tion sto­ry that got lit­tle atten­tion — but sure got mine — was about coun­ty clerks report­ing to the state that vot­ers were try­ing to change par­ties by using a loop­hole in the law.

They were remov­ing them­selves from the vot­er rolls and then re-reg­is­ter­ing under a dif­fer­ent party.

The State Board of Elections sent a memo to all coun­ty clerks in March warn­ing that any vot­er who attempt­ed this would be inel­i­gi­ble to vote in the May primary.

According to WKYT-TV, the secretary’s office said it hadn’t seen any evi­dence of vot­ers try­ing to use the loop­hole, but if it did, it would refer them for prosecution!

I assume most of those who de-reg­is­tered and re-reg­is­tered to change par­ties prob­a­bly didn’t know it was a crime — because it shouldn’t be a crime.

However, if leg­is­la­tors made one sim­ple and sen­si­ble change to the law, there would be lit­tle incen­tive for vot­ers to try to use the loophole.

Late to the party

State law requires that vot­ers who want to change their par­ty reg­is­tra­tion do so by Dec. 31 of the year before the elec­tion. Kentucky is an out­lier in this regard. Most states that don’t have open pri­maries allow vot­ers to change their par­ty affil­i­a­tion clos­er to the elec­tion, or even on the day of the election.

In most of those states, it’s the same day as the vot­er reg­is­tra­tion dead­line, which is about 30 days before the elec­tion. In Kentucky, the vot­er reg­is­tra­tion dead­line this year was April 20.

If peo­ple are allowed to re-reg­is­ter by that date to change their address because they’ve moved, why not allow them to change their party?

What’s so egre­gious about requir­ing vot­ers to choose their par­ty by Dec. 31 is that they must do so before they even know who the par­ties’ can­di­dates will be. The dead­line for can­di­dates to file is the first Friday fol­low­ing the first Monday in January, which this year was Jan. 9.

Party loyalty lapses

I know that many vot­ers, espe­cial­ly old­er ones, remain in the same par­ty all their lives or change par­ties only once. But despite the grow­ing par­ti­san divide in this coun­try, or per­haps because of it, par­ty loy­al­ty isn’t what it used to be.

The fastest-grow­ing par­ty affil­i­a­tion in the coun­try, and in Kentucky, is no par­ty, or independent.

For sev­er­al months last year, and again this year, the num­ber of vot­ers reg­is­ter­ing as “oth­er” (inde­pen­dent or third par­ty) in the state was greater than the num­ber of those reg­is­ter­ing as Democrats or Republicans.

I’ve been a Democrat, a Republican, a third-par­ty mem­ber, and an inde­pen­dent. In recent years, I’ve switched back and forth depend­ing on what races and can­di­dates were on the ballot.

If I had known ear­ly enough that there would be no Democratic coun­ty can­di­date on the May 19 bal­lot here, I might have reg­is­tered as a Republican this year, but by the time the can­di­dates had filed, it was too late.

I asked Al Cross, a retired polit­i­cal reporter for The Courier Journal, why he thought Kentucky set its dead­line for chang­ing par­ties so ear­ly, and he said it “was prob­a­bly aimed less at vot­ers than at poten­tial can­di­dates who might change parties.”

Legislators also made the fil­ing dead­line for can­di­dates ear­li­er “in order to gauge oppo­si­tion before cast­ing risky votes” in the General Assembly.

In 1979, he said, the fil­ing dead­line was 55 days before the elec­tion, and it has grad­u­al­ly moved to ear­ly January, which is “the longest peri­od from fil­ing dead­line to pri­ma­ry in the coun­try,” he said.

Independents’ days

Kentucky law not only dis­crim­i­nates against inde­pen­dent vot­ers but also against inde­pen­dent can­di­dates. If some­one wants to run as an inde­pen­dent, they must be reg­is­tered as an inde­pen­dent vot­er — again, by Dec. 31 of the year before.

In oth­er states, if a can­di­date los­es his party’s pri­ma­ry, they can file that sum­mer and run again as an inde­pen­dent or third-par­ty can­di­date. That’s what for­mer Sen. Joe Lieberman, D‑Conn., did in 2006 and won. And in 2010, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R‑Alaska, made his­to­ry by win­ning a write-in cam­paign for re-elec­tion after she had been pri­maried by a tea par­ty can­di­date in her own party.

In Kentucky, that wouldn’t have been pos­si­ble. Not only does Kentucky require can­di­dates to declare their par­ty affil­i­a­tion by Dec. 31, but it also has a “sore los­er law” (KRS 117.265) that says “any can­di­date who is defeat­ed or dis­qual­i­fied in a par­ti­san or non­par­ti­san pri­ma­ry shall be inel­i­gi­ble as a can­di­date in the same office in the reg­u­lar elec­tion, unless there is a vacancy …”

And KRS 118.315 states that “no per­son whose reg­is­tra­tion sta­tus is as a reg­is­tered mem­ber of a polit­i­cal par­ty shall be eli­gi­ble to elec­tion as an inde­pen­dent, or polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tion, or polit­i­cal group candidate.”

If that law were repealed, I think it would result in less extreme bina­ry choic­es in gen­er­al elections.

Open primaries?

Last December, when I asked state Sen. Greg Elkins, R‑Winchester, about the Dec. 31 dead­line for chang­ing par­ties, he said: “It makes no sense to me. I think we should get more in line with what oth­er states are doing.”

He agreed that the date for chang­ing par­ties should coin­cide with the vot­er reg­is­tra­tion dead­line in April. But when I ques­tioned him about it again dur­ing a recent Family Foundation lun­cheon in Winchester, he seemed non­com­mit­tal. He also hint­ed that it was unlikely.

However, he men­tioned that there is some inter­est in allow­ing inde­pen­dents to vote in Republican and Democratic pri­maries — if they are reg­is­tered as inde­pen­dents by the Dec. 31 dead­line and declare at that time which pri­ma­ry they want to vote in.

“I think you may see some­thing like that com­ing for­ward soon,” he said.

That isn’t good enough. If you have to decide by Dec. 31 which party’s pri­ma­ry you’re going to vote in, then you’re an inde­pen­dent in name only.

In a recent Spectrum News arti­cle, the sec­re­tary of state advo­cat­ed open­ing up par­ties’ pri­maries to independents.

“I think if you’re an inde­pen­dent vot­er,” he said, “we shouldn’t dis­en­fran­chise you.”

But Trey Watson, a Republican strate­gist, said that open­ing pri­maries isn’t the solution.

“The solu­tion is peo­ple need to go back to the par­ties from whence they came and try to res­cue their par­ties from the wings,” he said. “We have a grow­ing rad­i­cal­iza­tion prob­lem in this coun­try, and it can only be solved by sane, reg­u­lar, nor­mal peo­ple get­ting back involved in the par­ty process.”

I agree 100 per­cent. We need to main­tain the integri­ty of each party’s nom­i­na­tion process while also sav­ing both par­ties from the hard right and the mil­i­tant left. But to make the two par­ties less extreme, we’ll need to change the elec­toral sys­tem. A good place to start would be to decrim­i­nal­ize par­ty switch­ing by vot­ers and can­di­dates and to give both more time to file or register.