All Duane Pike wanted to do was cast his vote.
It was a primary election years ago, and the Vietnam veteran had just moved to the state.
But because of his party affiliation, or lack thereof, he was stuck with a ballot featuring names of people he had no clue about.
“They said, ‘Well, you can vote for the judges,’ and I said, ‘I don’t know who they are, so what’s the point in that?’” he said.
Florida is one of 11 states that has a fully closed primary system, meaning that people have to vote in the primary elections for the political party in which they’re registered rather than whomever they choose from any party (as voters can in Georgia, Michigan, Vermont and seven other states). The Florida presidential primary is Tuesday, March 15.
Republicans can’t weigh in on Democratic candidates and vice versa unless they change their affiliation — hence progressive Democrats’ recent push to get Republicans and independents who support Bernie Sanders to switch to Democrat.
Independents and non-party affiliated voters, meanwhile, are often stuck with no one to vote for at all, save for nonpartisan races and NPA candidates.
And in a state like Florida, which has seen a spike in independent and non-party voter registrations, that means millions of people are left out of the process of choosing presidential, congressional and other nominees ahead of the general elections.
Since 1995, according to a recent Miami Herald report, the number of NPA or third party voters has nearly quadrupled in the state — 3.2 million as of 2015.
Meanwhile, there are 4.1 million Republicans and 4.6 million Democrats, and political observers expect the number of NPAs to catch up quickly as more and more people become disenchanted with the political process.
Pike said he’s not really a political guy (though he does think John Kerry “got the shaft” in 2004 courtesy of the notorious Swift Vets and POWs for Truth ad). But getting left out of such a key part of the political process inspired him to act.
“Having been in the military, combat, everything else, I’m big on individual rights,” he said. “And what I see in Florida is, it’s not quite right.”
So he and some associates launched the Florida Fair and Open Primaries initiative, an effort to get a constitutional amendment on the state ballot that would open up Florida primaries to any registered voter.
The group tried for the 2012 ballot, but fell short. Despite that, they’re continuing their efforts to make the voting population aware of what they see as an affront to American democracy.
“We knew the chance of success of the thing was like a pipe dream because you have to get, like, 680,000 signatures,” he said. “They have to be categorized by certain counties. The state is kind of rigged on any kind of ballot initiatives.”
If the effort were to succeed, all of the major candidates would appear on the same ballot, though there would have to be two separate amendments to make that happen: one addressing the issue at the state level and one at the federal level. Voters would choose their candidates and, assuming no one gets more than half of the vote, the top two votegetters would move on to a runoff election in November. Said candidates could both be Democrats, Republicans, you name it.
(How this "top two" runoff protocol would work in presidential elections, which are beholden to the Electoral College, has yet to be clearly defined, however.)
“We don’t care what party they’re in,” Pike said.
Four states currently follow that model, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. About half use some kind of “hybrid” model, and it’s often the parties that choose whether to exclude non-affiliated voters.
Supporters of open primaries say the current setup in Florida ensures discord in Washington, DC and Tallahassee, given that people who vote in primaries tend to go for candidates with less moderate views.
“We elect people from the far left and the far right pretty much exclusively,” said pollster Steve Vancore, who is president of VancoreJones Communications in Tallahassee. “The Democrats are going to elect the most Democratic person in the Democratic primary. The Republicans are going to elect the most Republican person in a Republican primary.”
“What you see now is what you got,” Pike said. “We got basically, now, a dysfunctional Congress. Nobody likes them. The president and Congress and Senate, they never agree on anything. So if you open up the primaries to every person, you’re going to get a broader range of input. You’re going to get things where the two main parties don’t necessarily control things very much with Super PACs.”
In a way, open primary advocates say, closed primaries force voters to associate with a political party just to accomplish the most basic civic duty.
“These are not just people who are outliers, who are not engaged,” Vancore said. “These are active, engaged voters, but they’re being denied the opportunity to vote in meaningful elections under Florida law because they choose not to affiliate with a particular political party. And by choosing not to affiliate with a particular political party, the vast majority of voters are statutorily prohibited from voting in [primary] elections.”
He likened the requirement that a voter belong to a party in order to participate in the primary to a poll tax. It also compels association, which would seem to go against the First Amendment.
“I think that’s un-American,” Vancore said. “I really do.”
Yet it might be in the best interest of the parties to keep primaries closed as a way to ensure their preferred candidates will have support — or, in other words, to prevent voters from trying to sabotage an opposing party by backing a fringe candidate that’s unelectable in the November general.
“Political parties as private associations have the right to have their ability to have the freedom of association and ensure that the members who are participating are engaged and with their party and the interests of their party and the organization as a whole,” said Michelle Whittaker, director of communications at Fair Vote, a nonpartisan, DC-based nonprofit.
Take the contentious GOP primary fight. Establishment Republicans face the very real prospect of Donald Trump becoming the nominee instead of their preferred candidates Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio. Democratic and non-party voters in open primary states can easily weigh in on those contests.
But, as State Representative Chris Latvala pointed out in a Facebook post, the states in which Cruz won all had closed primaries.
“There have been 4 closed Primaries (meaning only Republicans can vote),” he wrote March 2, the day after Super Tuesday. “Trump has lost 3 of them. This is far from over.”
(Though analysts doubt Florida’s primary will shake out in favor of Rubio or Cruz. Vancore points out that early voting began with a much bigger candidate roster on the Republican side. “Marco Rubio is not going to win Florida,” he said. “Donald Trump is going to win Florida.”)
And it’s unclear whether or not voters in open primary states are deliberately trying to take down the party they don’t support.
“That’s elitist and unproven. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, right? Show me where this happened,” Vancore said. “I almost want to say, ‘So what?’ Voters should be allowed to vote. If people’s concern is voters will come in and vote in a way that I don’t like, well, I’m sorry if you don’t like the way they’re voting, but that should be their constitutionally protected right.”
In states like Florida, the process of determining a party’s nominee has become a government-sponsored private event in a sense.
“If you have closed primaries, it’s really a party function as opposed to a function of the entire government participating in a primary,” Whittaker said. “There have been questions in the past: should states be funding, in some ways, a private event in terms of a primary where only people affiliated with that particular party can [partake]?”
And in areas with high populations of members from one party or another (or gerrymandered districts), voters have to join a party whose ideals they don’t believe in just so they can vote — not fair, say open primary advocates.
“You have a right to join or not to join a party,” Vancore said. “And that should be the litmus. Should you be forced to join a party that you may not agree with just so you can participate in the Republic?”
To Pike, opening up Florida’s primaries would invite more voters to participate in the political process — not just because anyone can vote, but because it would help erode some of the cynicism that has led so many people to give up on politics.
“It’s a strange mentality in this country right now,” Pike said. “People aren’t stupid. They know it’s the very rich Super PACs that are putting out those kinds of ads. It’s not the average guy that’s got a buck in his pocket that donates to the candidate. They know it’s coming from some big money source. And they’re so fed up with that because of the Citizens United fiasco.”
This article appears in Mar 3-9, 2016.