DON’T CLOSE PRIMARY ELECTIONS
Tennesseans have now come full circle on the subject of closed political primaries.
For the last decade, some Republicans have pushed the idea of party registration, which, in turn, would allow only those registered with a specific party to vote in the closed election primary of that party.
So far, their efforts haven’t gotten very far, but that hasn’t stopped them from trying.
Indeed, on Wednesday, a bill setting up a closed primary system passed the House Elections and Campaign Finance Subcommittee in the Tennessee legislature on a voice vote.
Should the measure pass the full House and Senate, such primary rules would begin in August 2024, when a state and federal primary would take place.
We have long felt an open primary — Tennessee’s system is actually called “partially open” — is the right and proper election method because it allows for voting for the most qualified person, not a specific party, and because it allows those who don’t want to declare a party preference to vote in primaries.
The mechanism of the current bill before the legislature would slot voters for the August 2024 state and federal primary into the party category of the last primary in which they voted. Voters who had never voted in a Tennessee primary could go onto the state election website and declare their party there. However, voters would be able to change their party affiliation up to 30 days before the primary.
“The purpose of a primary is for Republican voters to decide who their Republican candidate’s going to be and for Democrat voters to decide who their candidates are going to be,” state Rep. Bryan Richey, R-Maryville, the bill’s sponsor, told subcommittee members.
Debbie Gould, president of the League of Women Voters Tennessee, a declared nonpartisan group but generally perceived to lean left, was among those who opposed the measure in the subcommittee hearing.
“It would transform Tennessee into a system with closed primaries,” she said. “We believe that election laws need to be voter-centric, making it easier for voters to select representatives of their choice. Closed primaries move this process in the wrong direction and have the potential to further reduce Tennessee’s dismal voter participation record.”
As of Thursday, the legislation only had two co-prime sponsors, neither from Hamilton County. The Senate sponsor is Adam Lowe, R-Calhoun, and no Senate coprime sponsors were listed.
Before Republicans became the majority party in the state within the last two decades, it was many Democrats who were insistent that the state needed closed primaries and who posted their own bills in the legislature — as far back as 1967, according to newspaper archives — in an attempt to get them.
“There are a number of Democrats interested in closed primaries,” state Rep. Thomas Wiseman, D-Tullahoma, chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, said in 1967, “and I believe it is a matter that should be discussed by the party’s representatives in the Legislature.”
Once and future state Sen. Ward Crutchfield, then the chairman of the Hamilton County Democratic Executive Committee, said on a local 1968 League of Women Voters weekly public affairs television show that closed primaries were needed.
“Tennessee has no formal voter registration by party,” he said, “but we need it to help loyal Democrats choose who they want without outside interference.”
Democrats introduced legislation for closed primaries in 1971, they said, as a precursor to a 1972 state presidential primary. The presidential primary happened, but the closed primary didn’t, and Alabama Gov. George Wallace easily won the Democratic presidential primary. That only made Democrats dig in more because they said thousands of Republicans crossed over to vote for Wallace because they knew he would be a weak candidate in the general election (in which Sen. George McGovern was the eventual nominee).
“Republicans cannot dictate to Democrats how to vote,” said Maxine Smith, a Black Democratic National Convention delegate and executive secretary of the Memphis NAACP.
Democratic Gov. Ray Blanton, who was elected in the 1974 election following the Watergate scandal involving President Richard Nixon, believed he rode into office with a mandate for the closed primaries he favored. But in 1975, the Democratic-led legislature didn’t back him on the proposal.
Democrats, still in charge of the legislature in 1978 but now under Republican Gov. Lamar Alexander, sent yet another bill for closed primaries to the state Senate floor but were unable to pass it.
Thus, to date, Democrats while in control of the Tennessee legislature, weren’t been able to pass closed primaries because many of their members disagreed with the proposal. Republicans, while in control, haven’t been able to pass them, either, because many of their members didn’t want them.
We think that signals lawmakers are on to something — that closed primaries don’t seem quite fair to the bulk of Tennesseans. So we hope this closed primaries bill goes the way of all others in the last 50-plus years.