Still the only voter ID anyone should need
Last week, during a tour driving across parts of rural West Texas, I had a phone call with Nick Troiano, the executive director of Unite America. We talked about the Republican Party of Texas’s lawsuit to close the Republican Primary, a case pending in an Amarillo court, that could determine who gets to vote in the election of consequence in our rural, red communities, and the election that effectively decides most local races.
The case, Hunt v. Texas, seeks to “close” Texas Republican primaries and limit participation in those primary elections to “registered” Republicans only. It turns out this is not just a Texas effort, it is a complicated legal fight with national fingerprints, but the potential impact is simple: in rural Texas, closing primaries would fundamentally reshape how political representation works.
Most rural counties don’t have competitive general elections. The decisions that shape our schools, our roads, our hospitals, and our courthouse leadership are effectively made in the Republican primary. If that primary becomes closed, many rural Texans — including lifelong independents and local Democrats who vote in March GOP primaries so they can have a say in the local election where the decisions get made — would lose their only meaningful vote.
What Texans Think About Primaries
A new statewide poll commissioned by Unite America shows broad agreement across the political spectrum:
- Most Texans support keeping primaries open.
- Most Republican primary voters support the current system.
- Large majorities oppose party registration requirements.
- Voters value the freedom to choose whichever primary ballot makes sense for their community.
Troiano summarized it this way: “Voters want the freedom to vote for whomever they support in every taxpayer-funded election. Open primaries give voters more voice, choice, and freedom.”
The word “taxpayer-funded” is important. The Texas Republican Party is essentially arguing in their court case that they can close primaries because the Republican Party is a “club” and they can decide who they want to be a member. But Primaries in Texas are funded by the State of Texas and paid for by taxpayers, not the party, including those taxpayers that would be blocked from participating.
In rural Texas, where public institutions rely on broad community coalitions rather than strict party alignment, restricting participation would mark the biggest change to local political life in generations.
See here and here for the background. I found information about that poll here, which I’ll leave to you to interrogate. I have no trouble believing that this push is unpopular, but if so none of that has had any effect on state Republican leadership. The state GOP is the driving force behind the lawsuit, Ken Paxton has refused to defend the Secretary of State in it, and I’ve heard nary a peep from the likes of Abbott, Patrick, Cruz, Cornyn, et al. As we know, there are plenty of issues that poll poorly and still get implemented and made harsher because there haven’t been any consequences for the Republicans that do these things. Let me know when a Republican candidate wins a primary while vocally defending the current primary setup, then there may be something to these poll numbers. Until then, it’s another example of Republican leadership doing what they want and their voters accepting it.
Republicans should be allowed to make their own primary rules, as long as they don’t violate the principles of representative government (i.e. the Constitution). We don’t even “register” for a party in this state anyway, outside voting in the primary, but if they want to change that, and there are people who would like to vote in the Republican primary for one-party reasons, then those people can simply register as Republicans (then vote for the Democrats in November).
Since there is objectively no chance for a win by the plaintiffs to be implemented by the State of Texas and its counties in accordance with the Texas election calendar, I’m taking this as the first declared battle in the effort to enact closed party primaries in the next session of the Legislature. It would not surprise me in the least if there were to be significant bipartisan support for that.