Since the beginning of the year, legislation has been introduced in Missouri, New Hampshire, Idaho and Wyoming to close primaries outright or further restrict the ability of independent voters to participate. All four bills have been introduced by legislators loyal to former President Donald Trump, who formally endorsed the Wyoming legislation on Feb. 17. Other states are considering similar changes.
Trump and his acolytes are keenly aware that control of the mechanisms and rules of elections are a crucial component of influencing outcomes. Because the United States is one of only a handful of Western democracies with partisan election administration, they are working every angle: support secretaries of state and appointing local/state boards of elections and boards of canvassers loyal to their agenda; driving efforts to audit and overturn the 2020 results, as in Wisconsin; supporting and/or initiating voter suppression measures to depress turnout in Democratic Party strongholds. Now they are setting their sights on controlling who can and cannot vote in GOP primaries.
Trump wants closed primaries. That’s how he gets his people elected, and that’s how he regains power. Democratic Party leaders are unable or unwilling to stand up for the principle that publicly funded elections should be open to all voters because they themselves prefer to control who can and cannot vote. In fact one of the few reforms both Nancy Pelosi and Kevin McCarthy oppose are nonpartisan open primaries that allow every voter to participate on equal footing. “This is not a reform. It is terrible,” Pelosi said in 2018. That’s now stopping them from engaging an emerging, and highly destructive, Trump tactic to solidify minority rule by closing primaries and electing even more partisan actors who support his agenda.
