First some history. In 2010, The South Carolina Republican Party and the Greenville Republican Party wanted to close the Republican Primary to only party voters.
I took part in a phone bank to notify South Carolina voters of the closed primary effort.
On August 21 2013, IndependentVoting.org, a national association of independent voters and a defender of South Carolina’s open primary system, hailed a federal court judge’s ruling in Spartanburg that the Greenville Republican Party did not have standing to sue to close the South Carolina primaries after the State Republican Party withdrew from the lawsuit leaving the Greenville GOP as the sole plaintiff in the case which has been pending since 2010.
On January 27 2014, the Greenville County, South Carolina, Republican Party filed its opening brief in the Fourth Circuit. The case is Greenville County Republican Party v Way, 13-2170. The issue is whether the county Republican Party may prevent non-Republicans from voting in its primaries, especially its municipal primaries.
In South Carolina, in cities with partisan city elections, political parties still pay for their own primaries. The party rents the polling places, hires individuals to administer the election during the hours the polls are open, and pays individuals to count the votes. The party argues that, therefore, it has a right to limit voters in its primaries to party members. The brief presents evidence that officers of the Democratic Party, and even two state Democratic legislators, have voted in recent Republican primaries. The brief also presents evidence that tens of thousands of voters who voted in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary then voted in the following Republican county and city primaries.
The brief argues that a county political party does have standing to challenge the various election laws governing open primaries, because it is county parties, and also city parties, who administer the primaries for county and city office.
The U.S. District Court had dismissed the lawsuit because it felt only a state party has standing to challenge the laws.
So here is a twist. A party is paying for its primary, but the law is saying it has to open it to all voters.
NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote!
Michael H. Drucker
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