Without open primaries, taxpayers are shut out of elections they pay for

If there is a growth industry in South Dakota politics, it’s the primary election. Specifically, the Republican primary election.

Incumbent Republicans are facing frequent, often grueling, intra-party challenges. In the 2022 election, Gov. Kristi Noem, Sen. John Thune and Rep. Dusty Johnson all faced challengers from within their own party.

In the Legislature, there were Republican primary challenges in 15 of the 35 Senate districts. In the House, there are 37 districts with two of them being single-member districts. In those 37 districts there were 24 Republican primaries. Not to be left out entirely, Democrats had primary challenges in two House districts.

Incumbent Republicans, both at the state and national level, would routinely be considered conservative. That’s not good enough for an ultra-conservative wing of the party that inspired many of these primary challenges.

The problem with the primary system is that it is a closed political activity paid for with taxpayer dollars. The only people who can vote in the Republican primary are registered Republicans. Yet all taxpayers, regardless of party affiliation, get to pay for the primary elections.

(Democrats, bless their hearts, have opened up their primary to registered Democrats as well as voters who have registered as independent. It almost sounds like something out of “Blazing Saddles:” “We’ll take the Democrats and the independents, but we don’t want the Libertarians!”)

All of this may change if an open primaries ballot initiative is successful in 2024. An outfit called South Dakota Open Primaries is working to have voters decide on a constitutional amendment that would change the way we vote.

The open primary system that’s likely headed for the ballot would place all candidates for an office, regardless of party affiliation, on the primary ballot. At the end of the June primary, the two candidates who got the most votes, regardless of party affiliation, would meet in the November general election. In races for the state House, where two candidates are elected in most districts, the top four candidates from the primary would be on the general election ballot.

The effort to get open primaries on the 2024 ballot does not expand the field of candidates selected by primaries. Currently those who can be challenged in primaries are candidates for governor, U.S. Senate, U.S. House, the Legislature and county offices. State candidates for attorney general, secretary of state, treasurer, auditor, school and public land commissioner and public utilities commissioner will still be chosen by party convention.

There was an unsuccessful effort to change that in the recently completed legislative session. Senate Bill 40 would have moved the candidates currently selected at party conventions to the primary ballot. The bill sponsors were quick to point out that their legislation to get all candidates into the primary, and away from the convention, was not a result of the last Republican Party convention. At that convention, the aforementioned ultra-conservative wing of the party was in full attendance.

Because of their unified and vocal presence, Gov. Noem had to make a personal plea for the convention to allow her to keep Larry Rhoden on the ticket as lieutenant governor over an effort to replace him with her primary election opponent, Rep. Steven Haugaard. Marty Jackley, the party’s eventual candidate for attorney general, almost lost to a holdover who had worked for Jason Ravnsborg. In one of the more stunning and ironic pieces of political theater, Republicans cast aside the incumbent candidate for secretary of state, instead choosing to put the state’s elections under the care of an election denier.

If the open primaries initiative makes it onto the ballot, it will be interesting to see how the various state political parties react. Obviously, there was already some portion of the Republican Party trying to shy away from using the political convention to pick candidates. With so many primaries in the last election, it’s hard to tell how Republicans would react to having everyone vote in the primary rather than just the party faithful.

Democrats and Libertarians, when they field candidates for office, have a pretty easy path to the general election ballot. That would change with an open primary that includes all the candidates for a particular office. It’s a change likely to make primaries more interesting for the public as well as more expensive for candidates and their political parties.

Soon the South Dakota Open Primaries group will be circulating petitions to get their constitutional amendment on the 2024 general election ballot. Their success in this effort would mean that after years of being shut out of the primary process, the citizens who pay for primaries would also get to cast their ballots, regardless of their party affiliation or their lack of party affiliation.