Major Changes Coming to Virginia Primary System?

By: Lowell
Published On: 10/2/2007 6:21:47 AM

There was a major ruling yesterday by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals:

A state law that allows an official seeking re-election to force his party to pick its nominee for the seat in an open primary is unconstitutional, a federal appeals court ruled Monday.

The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling could scuttle a historic prerogative that has given Virginia incumbents the power to determine how they defend their seats from challengers within their own parties.

It's also likely to renew legislative battles over state election laws, particularly party registration and restrictions on who can vote in primaries.

According to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, this ruling "could lead to party registration" in Virginia.  At present, we don't register by party and are free to vote in one party's primary or the other (can't vote in both in the same election). 

How much impact would party registration have?  According to Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia, "studies have shown only about 2 percent of Democrats vote in Republican contests and vice versa."  On the other hand, Larry Sabato points out that this ruling "could hurt moderate Republicans," as "it could force the moderates to participate in party-only primaries or in-house nominations that are usually dominated by conservative activists."

I'd love to hear the analysis of others who are more knowledgeable about this than I am.

P.S.  The Washington Post writes that "Many GOP conservatives favor holding conventions, which tend to draw more passionate party members."  Speaking of GOP conservatives, this case was argued by arch-right-winger Ken "Cooch" Cuccinelli against fellow right-winger Attorney General Bob McDonnell!

Comments



Lack of party registration... (ericy - 10/2/2007 8:30:31 AM)

has one problem - volunteers waste huge amounts of time with voter-ID calls.  Bugging people with phony polls to try and identify the voters that you want to target for GOTV.


Crossover vote in primaries (listlady - 10/3/2007 11:16:43 AM)
I haven't seen Sabato's studies but wonder how, for starters, one gets any firm count of Democrats and Republicans without party registration. There are thousands of voters -- nearly 10,000 just in Arlington -- who have voted in both parties' primaries over the years. Many of them, from other indications, have a primary allegiance but cross over from time to time. Others wobble.

The impact varies. In Jim Moran's 2004 primary, for instance, about 5% of the voters were probably Republicans. In the 2000 McCain-Bush presidential primary, about one-third of a very large turnout in Arlington was voters who are ID'd as Democrats but -- with no Democratic primary that day -- took the opportunity to help out McCain.

This could get interesting next June if there's a Gilmore-Davis Senatorial primary and no Democratic primary contest. How many Democrats would jump in to vote for Gilmore, to try to advance the presumably weaker opponent against Mark Warner? How many would opt for Davis because Gilmore is such a disaster? And might the Republicans put up a straw candidate against Warner to try to keep Democrats at home?