Open Primaries? No thanks!

[NCDem777]

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/12/13/1724106/-Open-primaries-Thanks-but-no-thanks?_=2017-12-13T20:49:29.438-08:00

I agree with Bernie on a lot of things (get the pitchforks). Yes, we should get out of the Middle East and other regions where we do more harm than good. Yes, we should rein in Wall Street. Yes, we should not get in trade deals that are transparently written so that corporations can subvert local laws. Yes, we need strong unions. And yes, we need infrastructure improvement across all of America. Even the part whose people will consider infrastructure as part of some conspiracy to herd Christians into gas chambers or whatever the big conspiracy will be on InfoWars.

What I don’t agree with is the idea of open primaries. Open primaries, for those who don’t know, is a system where you can select the candidate who will be on the party’s ballot in the general election whether or not you’re a member of that party (with the caveat that you can’t vote in the other party).

The reasons why I’m against this are twofold:

[TheMastersNemesis]

1. I Agree Open Primaries Make It Possible For The GOP To Flood W/Candidates.

Open primaries is really a GOP plan. When a position comes open they seem to field a huge gang of candidates and outnumber the opposition candidates. You you could have say 15 or 15 OP candidates and maybe 5 Democratic candidates. It is a way to confuse voters. Plus they want to make it where there is NO party designation like many local elections. So the voter has no idea if there is a party designation. So you can get 2 radical candidates to pick from.

Bernie really is wrong on this one. Open primaries are stupid.

[questionseverything]

8. what you are talking about is non partisian ranked voting

and yes that would be a mistake

open primaries mean you choose which party to take a ballot from

no signing up somewhr

[NCDem777]

10. And letting non-Dems vote in Dem primaries

got us David Clarke

[unc70]

2. What are you guys talking about?

Open primaries do not work the way you describe. Certainly not the way they work here in N.C. I support allowing open primaries with certain restrictions such as those here.

And what do any of you propose for those states where voters cannnot register a party preference, even if they so desired. Makes it impossible to have closed primaries.

[Snake Plissken]

3. What is the point of having political parties if the primaries are open to all voters?

It makes no sense.

[Snotcicles]

13. We should go to rank choice voting. End the Majority/Minority separation that divides along party

lines. If we go with RCV and publicly financed campaigns, they all could be independent and vote on principle instead of party allegiance.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

18. Exactly my point!

[CaliforniaPeggy]

4. I don't agree about the open primaries. We have them here in CA, and I like them.

We can tell just fine who's what and we vote accordingly. Of course, CA is a blue state, so we mainly get to choose between Democratic nominees.

I didn't read the article, so I don't know what the author's reasons are for not liking open primaries. Of course, the situation gets more complicated when R's get on the ballot.

It does work in CA, however.

[NCDem777]

6. The reasons are

1. It mitigates GOP dirty tricks. David Clarke got elected sheriff because GOPers crossed over during the open primary and forced sane Dems off the ballot.
2. It doesn't seem fair to give people who refuse to join our party often because they want to have this smug "I'm above parties" routine, the same say as those of us who joined.

[Retrograde]

15. In CA primaries are a bit more complicated than that

For all offices except president we now have open primaries, where all the candidates for an office appear on the ballot regardless of party affiliation (or lack thereof) in randomized order that varies This is relatively new and 'm still not sure how I feel about this.

For presidential primaries, whether a primary is sort of open or not depends on the political party - this has been the procedure since the early 2000s. In 2016, the Democratic and American Independent parties (and one more which I forget) opted to let No Party Preference voters vote in their presidential primaries; the other 3 main parties restricted theirs to voters registered in those parties. This caused a lot of confusion among some fervent Sanders supporters who seemed surprised that the county registrars weren't clairvoyant and that they had to specifically request a Democratic ballot.

[kcr]

19. Fine for CA. But if we're serious about flipping red states to blue

advocating for open primaries will seriously harm that effort.

[LisaM]

5. I agree.

Parties have the right to choose their candidates. Donald Trump is a prime example of what happens as a result of open primaries, caucuses, and the lack of the safety net super delegates provide.

[NCDem777]

9. I'm a little iffy on super-delegates

IMO it should be a one Dem one vote rule. It's hard to talk about "equality" when some Dem voters have more say than others.

Even though superdelegates haven't shifted the primaries that much, it's still poor optics.

[murielm99]

7. I agree that open primaries are a bad idea.

I don't much care for caucuses, either. We will lose our party's integrity if we allow repiggies to flood our primaries and vote for the weakest candidates. They will undermine us in any way they can.

[EarnestPutz]

11. Washington State has had open primaries...

for years and has fought to keep them. Both National parties dislike
our system because it takes away some of their control. Think about
it this way, why should two self-serving, completely political (by definition)
groups of people have the power to decide what our two choices will be on election
day? They limit our democracy by limiting our choices to the candidates that
the party apparatus and procedures deem acceptable. This is really only
slightly better than the old Soviet system where there was one name on the ballot.

[Gothmog]

12. I do not support open primaries

[demmiblue]

14. I am fine with open primaries, I am not fine with caucuses and super delegates. n/t

[TeamPooka]

16. When is a party not a party? When there are open primaries.

[LexVegas]

17. Whos Bernie?

[crazycatlady]

20. They have ups and downs

THe downs is that when nobody is registered to a party, you get people crossing over for the sake of ratfucking. Another down is that as a field director, voter targeting is hard when nobody is registered to a party.

Ups-- partisan registration is not always accurate (particular when someone's been with a party for a long time and does not vote in primaries).

[alarimer]

21. Instant runoff or ranked-choice primaries are better.

Though the downside is that you can (and often do) have two members from the same party competing in a location where one party is dominant. This is better than open primaries and also allows many more people to have a say and prevents the kind of dirty tricks open primaries encourage.

I disagree that anyone should have to belong to a political party to participate in the system. More people are abandoning both parties. "Independent" is the largest growing affiliation and, rather that forcing people into a box they may not want to be in, find a way for them to participate.