Top Georgia Republicans are renewing their push to only let voters who register as party members cast ballots in GOP primaries.It’spart of an attempt to guarantee more ideological purity among the nominees.
The idea to end Georgia’s open primaries, which now allow any voter to choose either party’s ballot, has long failed to gain traction.
But Georgia GOP chair Josh McKoon says it’s time to reopen the debate now that President Donald Trump is back in the White House.
He released the party’s “election integrity priorities” late Tuesday, which is topped by a call for closed party primary elections.
McKoon told Politically Georgia that party stalwarts are clear they want “Republican voters electing the Republican nominees.”
“It is common sense to limit participation in Republican primaries to those voters who declare their allegiance to the Republican Party so our nominees reflect the philosophy of our voters,” he said.
The overhaul faces long odds under the Gold Dome and will be staunchly opposed by more mainstream Republicans who rely on moderate and independent votes to carry swing legislative districts….
Category Archives: political parties
“Election Day has long passed. In some states, legislatures are working to undermine the results.”
The AP notes a variety of ways in which legislatures may push back.
“Why Voters Rejected Election Reform”
Russell Berman digs in to the reform measures on the 2024 ballot, in The Atlantic.
“‘It’s a very dangerous strategy’: The controversial tactic super PACs used to boost Democrats this year”
This Politico story highlights money spent on third-party candidates thought to boost Democratic chances of victory.
But I’m genuinely pretty confused by the reporting: there’s a claim that the tactic “was used significantly more this year than in other recent elections, a POLITICO analysis found,” but the way the data are presented in the piece, it’s difficult to follow who spent what on whom, and how that compares to other cycles, and it seems like it includes both spending on third-party candidates and attack ads critiquing Republicans from the right. And though the piece says that “[b]oth parties have long sought to leverage third-party candidates to help them in their races,” there’s no mention of the amount spent in a similar fashion to help Republican candidates.
“How N.C. Republicans Learned to Stop Worrying and Start Loving Early Voting”
The subhead of this story in The Assembly: “GOP lawmakers predicted 25 years ago that Democrats would use early voting to steal elections in North Carolina. This year, they rallied voters to embrace it to secure victory for Donald Trump.”
As voting populations shift partisan preferences, I suspect we’re in for more stories about partisan shifts of opinion on the merits of particular election procedures. (And also: a gentle reminder that it’s possible to have views on election procedures that don’t depend on their partisan impact.)
“Dems quietly boosted Nebraska’s independent Senate candidate in the final days of the election”
Because of course.
Historically tiny House majority
As a result of the fact that California counties have certified their elections (yes, even in Shasta County), the last U.S. House race (CD 13, in the Central Valley) was called. And as a result of that, there are now a number of reports on the 217-215 split that will be “the smallest House majority in history” or “a historically tiny House majority” (once Gaetz doesn’t return and two other Members take jobs in the Administration).
UPDATE: the inimitable Richard Winger notes that the 1930 election for the 72d Congress elected 217 Republicans, 217 Democrats, and one member of the Farmer-Labor Party. And it’s true, a one-vote margin is closer than a two-vote margin.
“Will NC Republicans have the votes to override Cooper’s veto of powers-stripping bill?”
The story above was about how well the North Carolina elections process works. Jury’s still out on the state’s democracy process, though.
This News & Observer piece reviews the legislation tacked on to a Helene relief bill, stripping state executive officials’ powers in Democratic hands that might check the Republican-supermajority legislature. The legislation was passed largely on party lines, vetoed by the Governor, and now needs every Republican legislator in the state House and Senate in order to override the veto. The Republican Senate has already moved to override. But that “largely on party lines” statement is really important: three Republican members of the House voted no as the bill was on its way to passage, and there are a lot of eyes on them as the House sets up an override vote for next week.
“Will Trump’s high-turnout win make Republicans rethink opposition to voting access?”
Miles Park for NPR:
When John Merrill was secretary of state of Alabama, he felt like it was his job as the state’s top voting official to encourage voter registration.
“One of the things I was known for as a secretary was trying to get everybody in the state that was eligible,” said Merrill, a Republican.
But he remembered that for many in his party, that stance was controversial.
“I had people when I would speak to some Republican groups, they’d tell me, ‘I don’t like that, I don’t think it’s a good thing,'” Merrill said. “And I’m like, ‘Why would you say that?’ And they’re like, ‘Because you’re going to get more Blacks and you’re going to get more Democrats.'”
It’s not usually said out loud that explicitly. But for decades, the GOP has generally sought limits on voting access. Just this year, Republicans sued numerous times to try to rein in mail voting, and sued the Biden administration over an executive order meant to encourage voter registration.
Such moves — along with restrictive voting legislation — have usually been done in the name of enhancing election security. But politics plays a role, too.
For years, conventional political wisdom has held that higher-turnout elections — as well as policies aimed at increasing voter access — would favor Democrats, and lower-turnout elections — and more restrictive policies — would favor Republicans.
In 2020, then-President Donald Trump even expressed concern that higher levels of voting would mean “you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.”
But this year’s election results are a major blow to that theory. Republicans won a trifecta at the federal level in a high-turnout environment.
And now the question is, how will the party respond?
“High turnout doesn’t hurt Republicans, and it can in fact help them,” said Guy-Uriel Charles, an election law expert at Harvard University. “Now we will see whether the lesson that they learn here is, OK, let’s not fight access … or we will see whether we return back to regularly scheduled programming.”…
“Replacing JD Vance in the U.S. Senate sets off scramble in Ohio”
An interesting article from CBS News on the intraparty negotiations in Ohio, where Governor Mike DeWine will be filling JD Vance’s seat until the required special election. DeWine’s goal apparently is to avoid picking a weak candidate that might lead to a comeback for Sherrod Brown in 2026.
“Three California Minor Parties File Federal Lawsuit Against Top-Two System”
Ballot Access News: This week, three California minor parties filed a federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the California top-two system. The parties are Peace & Freedom, Green, and Libertarian. Here is the 12-page Complaint in Peace & Freedom Party v Weber, n.d., 4:24cv-08308.
The case challenges the California system as an impediment to ballot access for minor parties, thereby sidestepping Washington State Grange v. Washington State Republican Party, 552 U.S. 442 (2008) and the decisions of lower courts upholding similar systems in Washington and Alaska:
“In its almost fourteen years of existence, the California top-two system has barred all minor party members from appearing on the general election ballot, except in races in which only one of the two major parties ran someone in that race. There is only one exception to that statement; in 2024 an American Independent Party candidate for Assembly qualified for the general election ballot, even though there had been candidates from both major parties in the race.”
“Buttigieg Warns Trump-Panicked Democrats, ‘We Cannot Be Mesmerized’”
Pete Buttigieg urges Democrats not to get on Trump’s rollercoaster . . . by which he means off their phones and out in communities engaging in associational party building.
From the NY Times:
“Mr. Buttigieg suggested that Democrats spent too much time online at the expense of the sort of human interactions that defined campaigns before social media and influencers became central ways to communicate political messages. ‘
We’ve got to figure out how to take online conversations offline at scale,’ he said.”
I could not agree more, and I also agree with his call to avoid the roller coaster.
“We will be inclined to react with shock by some things that are done precisely with the intent of shocking us, we need to move very quickly through the shock.”
“DNC layoffs with no severance leave staffers scrambling, union says”
Washington Post has this intriguing story. DNC layoffs appear to go beyond the normal cycle of scaling back the political organization after an election. The article reports: “Those laid off included people who had been with the organization for 40 years, the union said.”
Party Politics is Transactional Politics
The theory of associational party building, which Didi Kuo and I have written about, started with my in-depth look at the work of Harry Reid in Nevada. It is perhaps not surprising then that of all the commentary on the 2024 Election in the last two weeks, the one that has resonated most with me is that of Adam Jentleson (former Chief of Staff to Harry Reid). Jentleson makes three points:
- The electorate is not as polarized we have “been conditioned to think” in our echo chamber.
- The 2024 Election indicates the potential for realignment.
- The politics of that realignment remain fluid, but for Democrats to succeed in winning that fight, they will have to accept that party politics is transactional politics.
The Democratic Party’s inability to form a supermajority, Jentleson argues, is a result of its failure to perform the essential mediating function of a party: prioritizing winning over placating the demands of the ideological issue-based groups in its partisan network.
The flip side to that is that the problem with the Democratic Party’s partisan network is that it is filled with coalition partners who are fundamentally anti-party and do not get transactional politics. He does not say this, exactly.
He also does not say that a critical difference between the two parties is that while elites dominate both, Republican Party elites are fundamentally transactional in their relationship to the party: “Do what it takes to get into office, and then when you get there, we expect you to do this and that.”
A key measure of party building is the ability to win office, a point Didi and I made at great length. Without power, associational parties cannot deliver for their constituents. What we did not highlight was our slightly different conceptions of party institutions. I have long accepted a broader conception of the party as a partisan network.
The 2024 Election leaves me reconsidering. Perhaps Didi and others are right that networked political parties are fundamentally different institutional beasts than traditional federated parties— profoundly weaker, at least when their partisan network is dominated by groups that do not prioritize political power over ideological purity.