The Devil's Bargain

Can the Idaho GOP restore its right of association?

A couple of weeks ago I looked at what advocates of the blanket primary / ranked choice voting initiative were trying to accomplish. They aim to transform our current system of private political parties nominating candidates for the general election into one in which primaries are completely divorced from political parties, serving instead as simply the first round of a two-part election process.

Yet political parties are not completely independent right now, are they? Right now taxpayers fund primary elections in Idaho, which allow Republicans, Democrats, Constitutionalists, Libertarians, and Greens to select their nominees. Each party is guaranteed a spot in the November general election so long as they field candidates for the primary. County clerks are tasked with running ostensibly private contests, and as you know, once government is involved in something it will inevitably call the shots.

This dichotomy came to a head last week when Secretary of State Phil McGrane informed Idaho Republican Party Chairwoman Dorothy Moon that his office could not enforce new rules passed by the Republican Central Committee which aim to curtail the epidemic of crossover voting.

Currently, unaffiliated or new voters can affiliate with the Idaho Republican Party at the polling place on Election Day and request a Republican ballot. Members of other parties must change their affiliation on the candidate filing deadline which is about two months prior to the primary election. Many prominent Democrats urged their voters last year to affiliate as Republicans to interfere with the GOP primary, and it’s likely that several thousand did just that.

Some say this isn’t happening, but both data and anecdotes suggest it is. Almost no Democratic primary races were contested in 2022, allowing Democrat voters to cross over and make mischief in the Republican primaries. Figures such as Idaho Dems Chair Lauren Necochea and former Republican Jim Jones urged people to do just that.

Several people who would never be mistaken for even moderate Republicans have proudly boasted about how they are registering Republican to vote in the next primary. Perhaps they are just blowing smoke, but consider how easy it is for political activists to simply switch their affiliation back and forth as necessary.

The Idaho GOP passed new rules over the last year that were meant to curtail this problem, forcing unaffiliated voters to affiliate by December 30 of the previous year to take part in the Republican primary. Additionally, anyone switching affiliation from another party — Democrat crossovers, essentially — must wait a full year before voting in the GOP primary.

McGrane, however, claimed that Republican Party rules could not supersede state law:

Instead of enforcing political party rules, McGrane said his office is required to follow Idaho law, which sets the deadline for changing party affiliation at 67 days before the primary election, the same day as the candidate filing deadline. That means the deadline to change party affiliation in Idaho will fall on March 15, not Dec. 30 as Idaho Republican Party officials set forth in a new party rule passed in June. Unaffiliated voters and unregistered voters will still be able to register to vote and affiliate with a political party at the polls when they show up to vote. 

Idaho Capital Sun

Thus we return to questions about whether or not political parties are truly private organizations. According to Dr. Matthew May’s dissertation, which examined the history and state of primary elections in Idaho, the idea of having the government run partisan primaries was discussed as early as 1903, barely a decade after statehood. Idaho alternated between various forms of primaries and privately-run caucus, leading to our situation today where the GOP will host a caucus for nominating a presidential candidate but have all other nominees decided in the May primary.

The Idaho GOP and the Legislature worked together to close the primary more than a decade ago. Before that, voters could request any party’s ballot on Election Day, no matter their partisan affiliation. Then-Secretary of State Ben Ysura fought to maintain the open primary but a federal court ruled that parties, as private organizations, had the right to disallow non-Republicans from voting in their own primaries.

If that was the case then, why does state law trump party rules when it comes to deciding who can participate in those very same primaries? This was the argument that Chairwoman Moon made in her letter to Secretary McGrane.

When my former home state of Washington attempted to implement a top-two primary, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals struck it down on grounds of freedom of association. However, the Supreme Court overruled that decision, ruling that since the top-two primary replaced the partisan primary system, it was no longer a matter of free association, but instead a completely new election system that bypassed the parties entirely. From Dr. May’s dissertation:

By 2008, the case had once again progressed to the U.S. Supreme Court. In Washington State Grange v. Washington State Republican Party, the top-two primary decision was reversed and the Court ruled that the system was in-fact constitutional because it is not a party nominating system and does not pick a party’s nominee, but rather “winnows” candidates for the general election... Parties had unsuccessfully argued that candidates that advanced to the general election de facto became the party nominee, even though non-party members had been able to influence their selection.

In our current system, candidates register for the partisan primary, and then proceed to the general election as the undisputed champion for that party. Parties then spend time, energy, and money supporting their candidates in the general election. What happens when the link between party and candidate is essentially dissolved?

If the initiative being circulated by Reclaim Idaho passes, it will remove political parties from the electoral process. Under the proposed system, candidates can identify with any designation they please. A far-left socialist could put “Republican” on the primary ballot just as easily as a far right conservative could put “Democrat”. The end result is that party identification becomes meaningless.

Perhaps this is simply the end result of a long process of ceding party integrity to the government. Proponents say that removing parties from the process is a good thing, but I believe that way leads to mob rule, not a more representative republic. It leads to increased centralization as citizens and voters no longer organize in parties from the ground up, rather they simply tune in to centralized information sources.

We are watching in real time a nationwide effort to change the way in which elect our representatives. Recall that Phil McGrane gained national attention during the election last year as a defender of democracy in contrast to primary opponents Dorothy Moon and Mary Souza who said our electoral system was beset with numerous problems that needed fixing.

Indeed, national media cast anyone who questioned any part of the 2020 election as election deniers or even insurrectionists. The same Time Magazine that lauded McGrane ran a cover story in early 2021 explaining exactly how left-wing activists and billionaires saved the 2020 election.

The story of the 2020 election was about changing our system from voters to ballots. Instead of voters visiting their polling places and casting their votes, ballots were carpet bombed throughout each state which were then harvested by partisan workers. Rather than representing the actual will of those citizens who bothered to show up, election results now represent the efforts of party operatives in collecting as many ballots as possible.

Elections are becoming more about ratifying what the technocratic bureaucracy has already decided rather than a real chance for the American people to exercise oversight toward our government. They don’t have to go full Saddam Hussein, who used to win Iraqi elections with 99% of the vote, because the options they allow us to have are usually not materially different. The national deep state reacted violently when Donald Trump threw a wrench in the works, and our local deep state is reacting similarly to conservative legislators who don’t play by their rules. Maintaining the system of moving taxpayer money to bureaucratic agencies and big corporations is the primary job of this increasingly voter-proof technocracy.

This is part of a larger societal trend toward centralization of power that has been occurring for decades, even centuries. The internet has smoothed out regional cultures as young people grow up following a handful of social media influencers rather than carrying on the traditions of their grandparents. The federal government micromanages our daily lives in ways that were unimaginable to our founders. Representatives and senators do not necessarily represent their district constituents, instead taking positions in favor of ideologies and interest groups.

Our society is moving toward a one party state. Sure, the GOP still exists, but consider how Republican leadership collaborated with the Democrats on the sham J6 committee that ignored exculpatory evidence and laid the groundwork not only for barring Donald Trump from the White House but putting hundreds of innocent people behind bars. Idaho’s own Congressman Mike Simpson enthusiastically voted for that kangaroo court. One party rule does not mean the GOP is outlawed, rather it is controlled opposition.

Every institution in our country is pushing the same narrative. Public schools, universities, corporate news media, entertainment, board rooms and HR departments, and the federal bureaucracy are united in their promotion of Marxist ideas such as critical race theory and the LGBTQ+ agenda. Anyone who disagrees is labeled a Nazi or white supremacist and quickly made persona non grata.

For all its faults, the Republican Party remains perhaps the only strong voice in opposition to this cultural revolution. Despite party leadership being on the same page as the left, the Republican grassroots are fighting back. Removing their voice from the electoral process will accelerate our leftward slide as the Overton Window drifts ever faster. The Idaho GOP gives voice to what I believe is a plurality of Idahoans who remain culturally, socially, and fiscally conservative. The same conservative voters whose representatives elected Dorothy Moon to lead the state party, who sent Brian Lenney and Glenneda Zuiderveld to the Senate, deserves to have their voices heard.

So how should the Idaho Republican Party respond? How can it protect the integrity of party affiliation and the electoral process? What can it do to stop leftists from crossing over to alter the outcomes of its primary elections?

First, the Idaho GOP should take this to the next level. Freedom of association, inherent in our Bill of Rights, has long been held to apply to political parties. Democrats don’t have the right to choose Republican nominees and the party has the right to set its own rules regarding members. If a federal court held that the party can bar non-members from voting in its primary, then by that logic the party should be able to decide the process for affiliation as well. Taking the Secretary of State to court seems to be the prudent thing to do right now.

The big picture question, however, is regarding the relationship between party and government. Should parties utilize the infrastructure of the state to conduct its primaries? Or should they instead withdraw from that system and conduct their own nominations?

Personally, I love the idea of a caucus system. It gives the people most interested in politics a chance to make things happen rather than leaving it to the whims of low-info voters who are easily swayed by ad campaigns. However, I recognize that it is a tough sell. Anything that makes political participation more difficult is very unpopular, to the point where even some Republicans oppose returning to in-person single-day elections.

Perhaps parties should reimburse state and county governments for the cost of their elections to remove any justification for state law superseding party rules. Or maybe the Republican National Committee should establish uniform primary elections for every state. I really don’t know the answer. Idahoans have been struggling with how to conduct elections for as long as our state has existed, and there’s no indication we’re on the cusp of creating a perfect system anytime soon.

Going forward, the Idaho Republican Party must continue to stand firm for conservative principles as expressed in the platform. Anyone interested in saving our state and our country must get involved. For all its faults, for all its problems, the Republican Party remains the best avenue for political change. No matter what the future holds, sitting on the sideline is not an option.