Excerpts from CDA Press:
By TOM GREENE
Staff writer - Coeur d’Alene Press
Otter, Newcomb say move would disenfranchise independent voters
COEUR d’ALENE — A courtroom showdown is brewing between the GOP and the state over whether primary elections should be closed or open.
“We now have a party rule that is in conflict with state statute,” said Rod Beck, a former state Republican senator from Boise. “The only way to resolve that conflict is to have a court declare that statute unconstitutional.”
The Idaho Republican Party Central Committee voted 88-58 in favor of closing party primaries earlier this month.
Critics — including many Democrats and Republicans from former Speaker of the House Bruce Newcomb to the GOP chairman to Gov. Butch Otter — say closing primaries will disenfranchise independent voters who will no longer be able to vote in primaries.
Supporters say it’s a no-brainer: A party has the constitutional right to chose its own candidate.
The law is seemingly on the side of Republicans who want to close the primaries.
In an opinion rendered by Attorney General Lawrence Wasden in March
at the request of House Majority Leader Mike Moyle, Wasden wrote:
“If one or more of Idaho’s qualified political parties adopts rules requiring voters to register as party members before voting in the party’s primary election, an Idaho court is likely to uphold the party’s right to do so and to declare Idaho’s open primary election system an unconstitutional infringement upon the party and its members’ First Amendment right to freely associate.”
For the law to change, the opinion states, “the Idaho state Legislature would have to amend it, or the aggrieved party or members of the political party would have to sue the state to effect change.”
There is currently no voter registration in Idaho, but a survey released earlier this year by Boise State said 32 percent of Idahoans consider themselves independent, 44 percent Republican and 18 percent Democrat.
Bev Moss, chair of the Kootenai County Democrats, said she understands the fear that there could be cross-over voting in primaries, but that has rarely, if ever occurred and “if we go to this it totally disenfranchises 30 percent of the voters, at least.”
“They don’t want to be put in a box. They want to be independent,” Moss said. “In order to do this, they will have to declare a party and I think instead of doing that they just won’t vote.”
With an overwhelming majority of Republicans holding offices in the state, Moss said, “What problem are they trying to fix?”
Ruthie Johnson, GOP state committee woman for Kootenai County, said voters will still able to vote for whoever they want in the general election, but in the primaries “Republicans ought to vote for Republicans and Democrats should vote for Democrats.”
“Because if anybody can go and pick up any ballot they want, then the Democrats can pick the Republicans’ candidate for them,” Johnson said. [More...]
In Wasden’s opinion, he wrote that the administrative burden was not a justified reason to not open primaries and had been shot down in other courts.
Idaho Secretary of State Ben Ysursa said a lawsuit is “probably inevitable.”
“It’s a matter of when,” said Ysursa, who would register as a Republican If Idaho made party registration mandatory. “It’s going to be a difficult task to defend our law against this rule.” [More...]
