The cross over bill, the bill designed to stop late primary season party switching, died 11 to 14, with five Senators absent.
The bill was a priority for the Republican Party this year, to my surprise, and before I realized that I had predicted its failure. I proved to be correct, but it did a lot better than I would have supposed quite frankly.
The bill sparked a really interesting counter bill for truly open primaries which would have been a uniquely democratic (small d) move which also failed, which is a bit of a shame. It was radical, but it was radically democratic and would have caused Wyomingites to have to rethink the nature of these party elections, which is all that a primary actually is. Freed of the need to run in a party primary and freed of the requirement to vote only for the party you registered with, its pretty clear some recent Wyoming elections would have turned out differently while others, of course, would not have. I can't see that any of the recent elections would have been impacted, but the two finalist going head to head in the general would have been different in almost all of the races, I suspect, for good or ill.
As it was, the bill that the GOP advanced would have been the second strictest primary registration bill in the United States had it passed, second only to New York. As my other recent posts here have made pretty plain, I'm hugely unkeen on the recent selection of New Yorker politicians that have been constantly in the news one way or another so I can't say that I'd regard whatever their primary system to be to give me a whole lot of hope about things political.
Anyhow, the bill ran into trouble right off the bat and the leader of the Senate had to walk it through three or four committees before he found one that would introduce it to the Senate floor. That might have been a signal about it being in trouble. Now its failed, although its not impossible that political maneuvering could reintroduce it. If it is reintroduced, it will say a lot about current party control over the process.
One thing that may have occurred to some Senators is not only what UW kept pointing out. . . there was no evidence of a Democratic party switching tsunami in the last election and no evidence that it had an impact on the election. . . but that if UW is wrong what the bill would actually do is cage RINOs, as some call them, in the party. People wouldn't have gotten back around to switching back into the Democratic Party prior to the next election, in all likelihood. And Democrats worried about a Republican general move to the right would just move over early, given the lack of viable Democratic candidates as a rule. The impact, in other words, would have made the center of the GOP larger. At least that would have been what I feel likely to occur. Talking to two non GOP folks who registered i the primary as Republicans both pretty much confirmed that if it passed, they were Republicans for life, and not in the way that those in the Republican right might be gladdened by.
Drunken boating is the topic of a bill that advanced. Drunken boating is a real problem, and it appears that the state is really going to clamp down on it.
The bill designed to take certain considerations concerning private schools away from counties and vest them in the State's School Facility Board barely passed its first reading in the House. If it doesn't get more votes than it did on its first reading, it will die.
This bill appears to have broken out into a really lively and unexpected debate in the House. Indeed, the House has seen a lot of unexpected debate this year, which is a good sign. One member raised the home rule issue and wondered why a bill was being passed that really addressed what was a local issue. He suggested that those unhappy with the county of origin's actions, that being Teton County, ought to take that up in the next County Commissioner contest, a point that's hard to argue with.
But the really surprising challenged came from the right. . . that is, to the right of those who are backing this bill that addresses the concerns of the Friess sponsored school that got this topic rolling. A Representative who home schools her children wondered if the state should deem it necessary to get involved in the facilities of private schools, would it sooner or later get involved with the same for home schooling, with curriculum being the specific thing mentioned.
I'll be frank that I know very little about home schooling in general and while I know good people and highly intelligent people who do it, I frankly wonder about its real viability for the most part in this modern age. The topics that have to be addressed by schools are so vast that I don't know how a parent could frankly begin to do it, in most instances. And I frankly thought that there was some state control over home schooling, in terms of what children must be educated in, but now that I think of it, I'm just assuming that and don't really know about it. I've heard that.
Anyhow, the Representatives point is a good one as people like me do feel that there are certain topics, i.e, curricula, that people must be educated in and I would not be very sympathetic to a parent who chose to omit one for a philosophical reason. So her fear is real. Once you start going down a road, you are going down it.
Another point raised by a different House members is that schools sell. Looking around the state and region, I see old schools from time to time that aren't schools any longer. Roosevelt isn't a school any more in my area, and up in O'Fallon County Montana, where I was the other day, an old grade school is now a brewery.
The reason that's important is if private schools get a pass on size, what's to keep them from later selling? Nothing. Indeed, I could see a crafty developer who wanted to build something big, build it in the pretext of it being a school, run it for a decade or less, and then sell it. So much for planning then.
Anyhow, the session is wrapping up soon, and soon the stories on the 2019 Legislative Session will end. Most folks here, I'm sure, won't miss them.
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