Open primaries benefit Tennessee

A bill now before the state legislature, which I learned about in a blog post by Nashville City Paper's Adam Kleinheider, would eliminate Tennessee's system of "open" primaries and require people to register as a member of a party in order to vote in that party's primary elections. Many other states require such party registration.

In Tennessee, you can easily vote in either party's primary simply by stating so when you show up to vote. You can only vote in one party's primary on a particular election day, but you can switch back and forth any time there's another primary election.

An "open" primary system lends itself to accusations of malicious crossover voting -- if one party has a clear favorite in a big race, some of its members might (according to the accusations) deliberately vote in the other party's primary in order to try to nudge the election towards whomever they consider the easiest opponent to beat in the general election.

I don't necessarily believe this is common. For one thing, there are usually several different races on a primary ballot, and by trying to interfere with, say, a state senate race in the other party you'd be giving up your chance to vote on the governor's race in your own party, or what have you.

Although Bedford County tends toward the conservative in its politics, and sometimes supports Republicans in national or statewide races, it has a Democratic heritage, and so most of the time the Democratic primary for county-wide offices functions as a sort of de facto general election. All of the candidates run in the Democratic primary, and then the Democratic nominee is unopposed in the general election. The GOP has tried a few times to hold local primaries, but without much participation. I recall one year when several candidates for county office, all of whom were running in the Democratic primary, attended the annual Republican party banquet, working the crowd for votes.

The issue of party loyalty has become a hot one in recent years, particularly so since State Rep. Kent Williams, who ran for office as a Republican, won the title of Speaker of the House with the support of Democrats, defeating the presumptive Republican leader Jason Mumpower. Williams' actions earned him the wrath of his party. He still says he's a Republican, but the party has declared that he can't run for re-election under the GOP banner.

Kleinheider opines, and I agree, that the open primary system is a moderating influence on political extremes here because it brings more independent voters into the process. States where only party members may vote in the primary seem more likely to nominate die-hard ideologues from either end of the spectrum. In Tennessee, someone hoping to become a party nominee has to worry about swaying independent voters, not just the party faithful. That tends to produce more centrist nominees -- Jim Cooper and Lamar Alexander, to name two examples. I think the open primary system should be retained.

But some of the commenters on Kleinheider's original post grumble about the two-party system in general and want to see it done away with altogether. That would be a terrible idea. I think the two-party system has been a remarkable stabilizing influence on our country over the past couple of centuries. Yes, there are abuses and extremes, but looking around at other countries I'm not enthusiastic about the ones that have multiple parties and coalition government. It's naive to talk about doing away with parties entirely. Our founding fathers didn't want there to be political parties, and George Washington was elected without a party affiliation, but parties formed almost immediately after that -- the people who favored a strong central government on this side of the aisle, the states' rights people on the other. Any casual viewer of "Survivor" can tell you about the importance of forming alliances and coalitions. The issues and the parties have changed over the years, but the two-party system itself has remained.

The bill to require party registration is HB 0629 in the House and SB 0544 in the Senate. It could have a huge impact on our state's future; please let your legislators know what you think of it.

-- John I. Carney is city editor of the Times-Gazette and covers county government. He is also the author of the self-published novel "Soapstone." His personal web site is lakeneuron.com.