open primary

The Washington Secretary of State has proposed rules for implementing the “top-two” primary which survived Supreme Court scrutiny in the Washington State Grange case. The rules call for listing a candidate's party “preference,” not affiliation, whether that party likes it or not--or even if the "party" does not exist.

Are you really excited about the idea of having Republicans intentionally change their party registration to vote in the Democratic primary this May in order to vote for the "weaker" candidate as proposed by the Oregonian's David Reinhardt? Well if you want to game the closed party primary system, here's something that will eliminate the rights of registered party members to select party nominees altogether.

This is a short clip taken from a 45-minute interview that I recently conducted with Norma Paulus. Paulus discusses the possibility of reducing partisanship through a Louisiana-style blanket primary.