As Arizona voters cast their votes in last Tuesday’s primary elections, efforts to implement sweeping changes to our primary elections were well under way.
The “Open Elections/Open Government” initiative would hopefully lead to a dramatic increase in voter participation during the primary elections by eliminating separate primary contests for each political party.
Instead of these publicly financed partisan primaries, the initiative would establish a single primary election in which voters can vote for any candidate, regardless of the candidate’s party affiliation. This would include “third parties,” such as the Green or Libertarian parties.
The candidates who finish in first and second place would face each other during the general election in November.
The current primary system in Arizona is “closed” or “semi-closed.” In a closed primary, only voters who are registered members of a particular party may vote in that party’s primary election. Voters are free, of course, to vote for whichever candidate they prefer in the general election.
But a smaller pool of participants inevitably leads to more partisan nominees and more gridlock: If only die-hard Republicans or die-hard Democrats vote in the primaries, it stands to reason that only those candidates will be nominated.
A large and growing number of voters are independents, and the partisan primaries constitute a major disincentive for those voters to actively participate in civic responsibilities, such as voting for their representatives in Congress or the state legislature.
Open primaries would allow voters of any party to have more of a voice in their government, especially their local government. In local elections, winners and losers are often determined by a few thousand votes.
Closed primaries limit candidates’ accountability to the voters by denying both sides an opportunity to evaluate and “vet” a candidate. In “safe districts,” one party or another will often not even put up a nominee when the district is skewed highly Democratic or highly Republican.
An unopposed politician is a dangerous thing. Removing the partisan barrier encourages candidates to fully engage with independent voters and opposing party members during the primary — people whose votes he or she will eventually need to win.
The Open Elections initiative would change all this, although it encountered many obstacles in the group’s efforts to bring the issue before the voters.
Opponents of the open primary filed a motion with the Maricopa Superior Court, alleging that such an initiative violated the state constitution’s “single subject rule” for ballot initiatives.
Additionally, the Arizona secretary of state’s office rejected the petitions, because 4 percent of the signatures in a random sampling of the signature sheets were considered invalid.
Our illustrious state legislature voted last year to change the requirement to 100 percent. Now, all 100 percent of the signatures must be valid, with no regard for margin of error.
Luckily (or not so luckily) for us, the state legislature is looking out for that 4 percent.
Reach the columnist at skthoma4@asu.edu or on Twitter at @SavannahKThomas
