Most voters stayed home for stunning Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez win

[Jim Lane]

126. The restrictive registration rules ARE the establishment's fault.

It was no federal lawsuit that gave New York its super-closed primaries.

Other states restrict primaries to registered members of that party. They differ in how long before a primary someone must change his or her registration to be eligible. I think the longest period outside New York is 30 days.

In New York, it's 30 days and then a general election. That means that, to vote in the June 2018 primary between Ocasio-Cortez and Crowley, someone registered with a different party or as an independent had to change party affiliation by early October 2017.

It gets worse. New York's primaries for state offices will be in September, with the same deadline. Someone who decided to re-register as a Democrat after the first week of October in 2017 can't vote in the Democratic primary in September 2018.