Closed primaries disenfranchises 3.7 million voters

Nearly 225 years ago, George Washington warned the nation about the evils of political parties and partisanship. He did not know the half of it. All these years later, about half of new voters seem to agree with our first president, choosing to register to vote as “no party affiliation.”

While this phenomena is well known, its consequence is less known. As voters withdraw from partisan identification, both major parties have moved further and further to the extreme edges of public policy. As the parties become more extreme, still more voters are turned off, accelerating disaffection with party politics.

Because one party or the other controls the election of most district office holders, more than 3.7 million Florida voters have been effectively disenfranchised. That number is effectively more than doubled when you consider that Florida’s 4,716,019 registered Republicans cannot vote in Democratic primaries, while 4,955,283 registered Democrats cannot vote in Republican primaries. Voters registered to any party should be concerned about living in districts carefully drawn to favor one party or the other while the clear minority of voters control the electoral outcome in a closed partisan primary. The solution is simple. Allow all voters to vote in all elections choosing among all candidates. The general election will decide among the two highest vote getters in the primary. It should not matter whether the most favored candidates are Republicans or Democrats — the voters will decide.

Contrary to recent misleading and partisan critiques of All Voters Vote, this will not take from the political parties the ability to freely associate or the power to choose their own candidates. Nor will it tell them how to go about nominating their favored voices. In fact, the All Voters Vote amendment expressly acknowledges and respects the rights of political parties to choose their own candidates by declaring that “Nothing in this subsection shall prohibit a political party from nominating a candidate to run for office under this subsection.”

The parties remain free to hold and pay for whatever kind of nominating contest they want and, as private organizations, make their own rules to exclude whomever they want. When they’re done nominating who they want via the process they choose, the ballot given to every voter in the All Voters Vote primary would reflect that nomination so that voters who support the Republican or Democratic Party can see who is supported by those private organizations. If the two favored candidates are of one party or the other, that simply reflects the will of the people.

Plainly, the cries of party leaders that they would lose control of taxpayer-funded primary elections should be ignored. If the parties want to exclude people, they should use their own money.

It is not difficult to understand why All Voters Vote is a good idea. It is overwhelmingly favored in polling by voters and overwhelmingly opposed by the political parties. Regardless, in the end, it will let All Voters Vote in elections that matter without inhibiting the rights of political parties to freely associate and pick their own candidates.

Glenn Burhans is Chair of All Voters Vote, the committee sponsoring the All Voters Vote Initiative Petition; he is also a shareholder in the Tallahassee office of the Stearns Weaver Miller law firm specializing in complex litigation and election/political law. Views expressed are his own.