🚀 go-pugleaf

Kristian M Zoerhoff <zoerhoff@sdf.org> wrote:
>On 2012-03-21, jgrove24@hotmail.com <jgrove24@hotmail.com> wrote:

>>Dorky Dan was WRONG again, the primary is open party, not closed. You ask 
>>for any party ballot you want. Now run some more PSA spots, and put your 
>>campaign signs in public rights of way.

>Declaring a party is what defines a *closed* primary. The fact that you can 
>switch parties at the next election cycle is irrelevant.

Illinois required you not to change which primary you vote in for 23 months,
which meant you had to sit out the primary in the odd-numbered year if you
wanted to vote in the other party's primary in the next even-numbered year.
But that was found unconstitutional; they never repealed this paragraph of
the Election Code.

I don't know if you're right about that. Doesn't open versus closed
primary apply in states that have party registration, which Illinois has
never had? In states with party registration, closed primaries means that
only those who had already registered with the party can vote; open
primaries mean that they don't pay attention to party registration.

>An open primary lets you mix and match up and down the ballot, which you can 
>not do in IL. If we had this, I would have been able to hit every race I 
>cared about, instead of being forced to pull a GOP ballot to vote for 
>several county-level races that the Dems couldn't muster up a candidate for.

Yeah, Wisconsin lets you changed which primary you are voting in
by office. I don't know what that's called, and I don't know if any
other state does that. Wisconsin lets you register to vote when you
vote, if you hadn't already registered. That's cool.

Didn't Quinn sign an amendment to the Election Code that meant you
didn't have to declare what primary you wanted to vote in? They still
made me declare, so I don't get it.