The Story Behind Why You Have to Pay for Party Primaries
As Bob Conner reported for IVN in 2014, New Jersey’s independents spent approximately $100 million to pay for primaries in which they could not vote between 2000 and 2013. The obvious question is, how did this come to be? How did taxpayers come to subsidize party primaries?

The origin of government-administered primaries begins in the late 1800s and early 1900s, when state governments began to intervene to curb the influence of party bosses and tackle corruption. A series of reforms – including regulations, the adoption of the Australian ballot, and direct primaries – culminated in the formation of a hybrid system, whereby public funds are used to administer primary elections that in some states bar participation by unaffiliated voters.

This hybrid system has grown out of how parties in most states historically selected their nominees: the caucus and convention system. Under this system, party members meet at caucuses – essentially local meetings – to select delegates who they believe best represent their values and the interests of the party. Then, the delegates meet at a convention to select a nominee to office: for instance, delegates from a state’s counties might convene to nominate a governor.

Under this previously prevalent system, while many delegates could have been grouped into competing factions at such nominating conventions, delegates often valued consensus and unity. Leaving a sizeable number of delegates dissatisfied could tempt those delegates to support a “bolting” candidate – one who would challenge the chosen nominee in the general election and fracture the party’s votes.

I hope this helps.

TM99

(8,352 posts)

4. Let's quote the end of this article shall we?

Reply to Agnosticsherbet (Reply #2)

Mon May 2, 2016, 11:07 PM

May 2016

This hybrid system leaves independents in states with closed primaries dissatisfied, since they are, in some cases, forced to pay for the elections of private organizations in which they cannot, as independents, participate. Efforts to resolve this ambiguous situation can take two different forms.

On the one hand, states can view primary elections as public procedures not unlike general elections. This view would justify subsidizing the cost of primary elections, since political parties would not be construed as essentially private organizations, but as semi-private ones subject to government regulation.

This approach would justify the move away from closed primaries and toward those in which independents can vote in a party’s primary (as in open primaries) or for any candidate of their choosing (as in so-called nonpartisan primaries).

On the other hand, states could treat parties as truly private organizations and discontinue subsidizing their primary elections and regulating their activities, such as how they select candidates or define partisan membership (though still leaving in place, perhaps, basic rules against fraud and corruption).

In other words, independents are justified in criticizing having to subsidize elections for private organizations in which they cannot vote. Whether the proper solution is to maintain that spending and open up primary elections (while violating the self-determination of private organizations), or whether the solution is to end that funding and respect the integrity of political parties to manage their internal affairs (while risking the recrudescence of partisan practices that instigated 19th and 20th century electoral reforms in the first place), it all depends on larger questions about one’s beliefs regarding the legal nature and purpose of parties and primaries themselves.

It is the outcome of these more philosophical debates about the roles of parties and primary elections that will shape the direction of electoral reform across the country.