Wyoming legislators propose radically different, and radical, primary changes. One is pretty good, but it has no chance.

Readers here are already aware of Sen. Bo Biteman's proposal to ban switching parties after the first day that candidates file for the primaries, in its now amended form. That is, after that date no switching allowed (which would ironically probably freeze any Democrats who switched in the last election in the GOP), which would mean no switching after May 1.

But now veteran Democratic Senator Russ Rothfuss has introduced a bill that would convert Wyoming primaries to an entirely new, and much more democratic, system that would wipe out party affiliation in the election in entirely.

This provides a really interesting, and frankly very educational, view of how we view our democratic system.  The GOP bill basically views primaries as legitimate state elections that are strictly limited by party, and those entering the party late as interlopers.  It's unlikely to gain enough support, even tough the GOP controls the legislature by huge margins, however.

The Democratic bill essentially views primaries as state sponsored party elections as illegitimate and seeks to return the state's politics to what had really been the nation's politics very early on.  It's a much more democratic proposal and it too is unlikely to succeed.

Which doesn't mean that it shouldn't.  Indeed, Rothfuss' bill is a good one and should pass, even though it won't.

It's a fresh and novel approach, and frankly if there are state sponsored primaries, a much, much more democratic (small d) one. Basically, the primary would sort out all runners, none of whom would run by party, even if they listed their party, and the top two would go on to the general election.  The primary would be just that, a democratic winnowing process in which the voters sorted through dozens of candidates, or at least a few, to choose the top two, and then choose between them in the general election.  This would work similarly to the system used by some European democracies.

There's no strong reason to believe that this would have changed any results in the last election.  Gordon pulled in about 9,000 or so more votes than Friess did, which in the context of a Wyoming's elections, is a lot of votes.  Indeed, Gordon came out far ahead of any competitor at the end of the day.  Mary Throne, in the Democratic party, came out far ahead of any other Democrat, but even at that her total votes were less than half of the also rans in the GOP.  Chances are in an open primary a lot of Throne voters would have gone for Gordon and he'd have been even further ahead, but there's no reason to believe that the end results would have been any different in the general election.  Chances are that the general election would have been Gordon v. Friess, with Gordon handily winning, or, very unlikely, Gordon v. Throne.  Gordon would still be governor.

Which is not to say that this couldn't have a result in some recent elections.  It definitely would have, in my view, in the 2016 House race which saw Liz Cheney elected.  If we'd had this primary system, the general election would have featured one of her GOP contenders (I've forgotten which one was closest to her) against Cheney, and its quite clear that they would have won, not Cheney.  But we still would have sent a Republican to the U.S. House and there'es no reason to think we would have done so otherwise.

Such a change would be a good way to restore democracy more purely to the election process and to address the increasing insanity of primaries.  But it won't pass as the parties live in fear of loosing control of what is effectively a state sponsored party election.  Right now, even though it wouldn't occur, Republicans will oppose it as in the back of their minds they'd fear a Democrat being one of the top two vote getters.  Democrats may very well not support it as right now almost all of their candidates locally would round out the bottom of the pile in any primary election.  Third parties should love it as its the only way they can really get their voices heard, which means that everyone else will dislike it for that reason. The same would be true for independent candidates, which is another reason the parties won't like it, as candidates that right now register in one party or the other just to get a chance would no longer have to.  In other words, it would make parties much less relevant than they are now.  

Which is just how the founders of the country imagined things.

But the reality of politics is that we have parties. And for that reason, this proposed reform won't pass either.

Targeting the Party Switchers. The 2019 Legislative Session Kicks Off.

The 2019 Legislative Session has kicked in, in the form of pre filed bills and committee meetings and, one of those early filed bills looks to. . .. the 2018 election.

As anyone following the late stages of the 2018 Gubernatorial Race would be aware of, late in the 2018 session the failed gubernatorial candidates, or at least some of them, and in particular one of them, began to complain that Democrats had crossed over and doomed their candidacy. 

There is, quite frankly, a certain element of hubris in an assumption like that, to say the least.

Such candidates were the extremely conservative ones, at least one of whom had a thin connection to the state in general in some ways, and there seemed to be s certain lack of knowledge on the state’s political culture on their part.  The state has never actually been liberal in the Alabama or Texas sense (not that those two things are the same), but more in a high plains sense.

As the Democratic Party is dead here there’s real reason to believe that Democrats crossing to the GOP would have little impact on any one race, but those failed candidates believe it and now a new Republican legislator from Ranchester (an area of the state which has had some odd politics in recent years) in the Senate had introduced a bill which would require a notarized signature in advance of an election to switch as well as submission of the switch form to an election judge.

In other words, switching would be more difficult.

That’s about all that would do.  Assuming election judges do their jobs honestly, they’d look at it and say “yup. . . that’s a form alright”.  Of course, history in other localities has shown that submitting such things to election judges often serves as a source of mischief for a party under stress, which mysteriously finds that Mrs. Ima Republican didn’t properly sign, or something, and is really a Democrat.

Indeed, the requirement of a notarized signature does nothing other than to serve that interest as at best a notary has verified that you are who you say your are by the presentation of identification, if not known to the notary personally.  Generally the Clerk’s office has notaries so that’s about all that would actually do, other than to further emphasize that you need to do it in advance of the election.

All this really points to a single thing, which is that primaries are party elections and if you don’t like people voting in them, don’t have one.  Disgruntled GOP figures should keep that in mind. If they did that, they could pick the candidates they wanted through a convention process, as they did in the old smoke filled room days. 

On the other hand, if they want to make switching parties more difficult, and they figure that a lot of Democrats switched in the 2018 Primary Season they ought to also consider that those Democrats probably wouldn’t be switching back until 2020. . . and so by making it more difficult, they’ll probably help cement some of them in the GOP.