The Push for a GOP Closed Primary and Potential Issues

John C. Davis

The following is the first of a series of posts on party primaries in Arkansas and recent consideration to closing the GOP primaries in the state. 

On June 8, the Republican Party of Arkansas voted to “close” the GOP primaries in the state at their bi-annual statewide convention. This rule change would limit access to a Republican primary ballot to only those Arkansas voters who register as Republican. News coverage has been slim, as few outlets followed the convention in real time. Still, Doug Thompson of the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported on the matter on June 10, and, as of the day of my writing, Conduit News reports to have the rules changes posted on the oranization’s website.

Currently, Arkansas is an “open” primary state—any registered Arkansas voter may select one primary ballot for either of the major parties or opt for a non-partisan ballot (which features the judicial elections and other non-partisan matters but excludes any partisan primary contests). While Arkansas has become one of the most Republican states in the country, only a small slither of our residents are registered as Republican on the voter rolls (even fewer are registered as Democrats). Today, when we register to vote, a would-be Arkansas voter does not need to select a party identification, and most of us do not. 

There seem to be legal and legislative hurdles to “closing” Republican primaries, but if this rule were applied, it would alter the way primaries are conducted in Arkansas. Due to the GOP’s dominance in Arkansas over the last decade, many more of us who participate in primaries in Arkansas vote in the GOP primary. Given this, the rule change is not simply a little ol’ internal matter among a few dozen party activists and, therefore, is worth consideration among the broader population.  

For over decade, more Arkansas primary voters have opted for the Republican ballot than the Democratic or non-partisan options. In other words, in the current “open” primary environment, more and more Arkansans have participated in the GOP primaries simply by requesting the party’s primary ballot. If the rule were to go into effect, I can see one of two options for enforcing it, and both are likely to lead to some confusion and lower levels of participation in GOP primaries—and, consequently, in Arkansas primary elections, in general. Either all registered voters in Arkansas who want to vote in Republican primaries will need to be aware of the new changes and plan and devote time and attention to update their voter registration, or voters would have to affirm at their polling location that they are, in fact, a Republican. The former option likely would lead to a dramatic drop in GOP primary turnout and a lot of folks denied a GOP ballot at the polls and the latter seems both potentially chaotic and too “watered down” to achieve the sense of party purity the supporters of this new rule seek. 

If I understand the motivations for “closing” the GOP primaries in Arkansas, it is because many of those present at last month’s state GOP convention believe that Democratic voters in Arkansas often request a GOP ballot intending to select the candidates they deem least likely to be elected in the General Election—a sort of strategic maneuver aimed at sabotaging the GOP’s chances in November. However, this idea, in my opinion, dramatically overestimates the number of otherwise Democratic voters in most areas of the state today who would spend their primary vote in this way and the frequency of voters taking the time, effort, and coordination to sabotage the other party’s chances. I am not saying it isn’t possible or that it has never happened, but it does not seem to be an issue in Arkansas today. For this to be a real threat to the GOP in Arkansas in today’s state political landscape, it would require a level of discipline and coordination that, frankly, I think most sizable collections of humans severely lack. 

Even if this were a real problem for the GOP, is this one of those instances where the treatment is worse than the illness? For what it’s worth. as a political scientist who studies state parties–and not as a someone who was in the room to vote on this issue—I struggle to see how this benefits the GOP in Arkansas in the long run. Successful partisan politics is about addition (growing the party), not subtraction, and—to this point—the GOP has been wildly successful in increasing its faithful among the Arkansas electorate. The fact is, most Arkansans are registered as something other than Republican but vote for Republican candidates in the primary elections and in the General Election. These voters are certainly not undercover Democrats, but conservative Arkansans who either value their independence from a party label or simply don’t recall if they are registered as a partisan or not, but nonetheless have delivered for the GOP time and again over the last decade-plus. This rule has the potential of closing the door on tens of thousands of Arkansas voters who would otherwise dutifully participate in the further growth of the GOP as voters but who failed to alter their registration or felt uncomfortable publicly swearing allegiance to any political party. 

More broadly, to my thinking, the most important issue on this topic is that closing the GOP primary in Arkansas risks effectively disenfranchises incredibly high numbers of Arkansas voters from fully participating in our electoral processes. Why? Because, due to the recent successes of the GOP in Arkansas, Republicans are often the odds-on favorite to win virtually all statewide contests and a hearty majority of regional and local election elections, too. This means that, in many places in Arkansas, the GOP primary is tantamount to the general election because the winner of the GOP primary is overwhelmingly likely to be the person who wins in the general election in November. A later blog post will drill into the numbers, but only a small number of Arkansans are registered Republicans (even if a sizable majority of Arkansans voters reliably support Republican candidates). In all fairness, those who voted for this rule may not see it as their job to worry about this last bit, and I can see their point, and I can imagine that they want to esnure that the candidate that best represents the values and interests of the Party is the candidate on the general election ballot, but the dramatic electoral gains Republicans in Arkansas have made bring with them responsibilities beyond the internal dynamics of the Party.