The Gaming of GOP Elections
New Hampshire outcome reveals issue affecting many states, including Idaho. Plus updates from Idaho, Florida, Arizona, Ohio and around the US.
I invite everyone to read this article about the New Hampshire primary. The author is not only a talented artist (who graciously allowed me to use his image above) but did an excellent analysis of the voter breakdown in NH. In summary, Nikki Haley’s strong performance (43%) was bolstered by Democrat voters crossing over to influence the GOP nomination. Those same voters will likely abandon Haley in favor of Biden if she were to win the nomination. In other words, the race was not really as close as it seemed.
I don’t really blame Democrats for doing this as politics will be littered with dirty tricks if not prohibited (and at times even if so). The GOP needs to understand that our elections are being gamed in this way and develop and implement a strategy to counter it. And fast!
This is a pressing issue right here and right now in Idaho. Let’s look at the 2022 primary election. In the 35 legislative districts, the GOP race usually had more than one candidate running and often more than two. The Democrats, however, did not run more than one candidate in any primary race. Not one. Not even in districts where they won the general election. This means the Democrat voters not only have no option in their primary elections, but that leaves them free to cross over and vote in the GOP primary instead. That is indeed happening as my own research has shown that in some precincts, 35% of the GOP vote came from people who were not registered as Republican just months prior to the election.
Still, there seem to be a lot of principled Democrats that do not cross over. But if the rules are changed so that any voter can vote in any primary election, what impact might that have on that party’s nomination? This is exactly what is at stake here in Idaho if the ‘Open Primary Initiative’ passes this November. It will eliminate closed primary elections and implement Ranked Choice Voting in the general election. This has seen Democrats and Independents elected even in red states like Alaska.
How Does the GOP Stop the Gaming?
Here in Idaho, defeat the Open Primary Initiative if it makes the ballot in November (which it seems likely to do)
The GOP has already taken steps to reduce the impact of cross-over voting via a recent rule change (see p32).
The Kootenai County GOP Central Committee implemented a system of ‘rating and vetting’ candidates for the primary. This rigorous process can help identify candidates that most reflect the party’s principles and those that do not and provide support accordingly.
Some talk has been made about fielding candidates in the Democrat primaries to even the playing field. While that may be distasteful to some, shouldn’t the lack of any real competition in Democrat races here in Idaho at least be better publicized and challenged?
What other suggestions could help address the gaming of our elections?
US: CISA Suppressed Absentee Voting Concerns? - America First Legal (AFL) received documents from a FOIA request that seem to indicate that CISA (Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency that oversees elections) censored information pointing to known vulnerabilities in absentee voting in advance of the 2020 election. The Epoch Times article is here (might be paywalled). The FOIA’d documents can be found here.
ID: BSU Public Policy Survey for 2024 - This annual survey covers Idaho specifically and there are a couple of election specific items on this year’s survey. These include the view on ranked choice voting (most opposed), open primaries (most in favor) and who prefers a presidential primary vs caucus (most favor a primary on the same day as the other primaries). Link to the report can be found here.
AZ: Lake Bribed To Not Run - In a leaked audio of Senate and Governor candidate Kari Lake, the then chairman of the Arizona GOP, Jeff DeWit, was heard telling her that ‘powerful people back east’ would be willing to pay her to pause running for two years. DeWit resigned over the controversy. The audio can be found in multiple places but here is one source.
FL: Citizen Group Responsible for Voter Roll Purge? - The Daily Mail posted this article about the loss of nearly 1 million from the Florida voter rolls during a time when Florida’s population is growing. What is going on? Kris Jurski of The People’s Audit has an answer - his group developed software and began monitoring the voter roll changes on a monthly basis over a year ago. Observation changes behavior and Kris believes his watchdog organization is having an effect. For example, he recently stated that he had not seen and ‘Red Belly Road’ episodes of addresses being flipped for the first time since the monitoring began.
US: RCV Study Shows Minorities Disenfranchised - I’ve written about this before but another study by a Princeton professor has also concluded that Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) ‘may harm black and Native American voters disproportionately’. The study of New York and Alaska elections shows that these groups had a higher rate of ‘ballot exhaustion’, where voters do not provide second, third or higher choice options on their ballot and can therefore be omitted from the final tally.
OH: Election Laws Ruled Constitutional - Democrat election lawyer Mark Elias lost his case in Ohio challenging last year’s law that enacted ‘new photo ID requirements, drop box restrictions and tightened deadlines related to absentee and provisional ballots.’
AZ: Registration System Mishaps - Secretary of State Adrian Fontes sent an alert to all counties about a problem registering some voters for the upcoming election. Apparently, the system is changing the voter’s party designation to ‘Other’ despite their intent.
US: Do Universities Have Registration Irregularities? - This researcher has done some stellar work on election data and his recent foray has looked into the voter registration rolls where the addresses point to a university address. In each case, people well beyond college years are showing with dormitory addresses as their current mailing address.
US: DNI Releases Foreign Interference Report - While I am not surprised that this activity is taking place, I found it notable that the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) report (p6) attributes the decentralized election system that we have in the US as posing challenges to foreign actors intent on disrupting our elections. Hmm…what about domestic actors?
Great post! REPUBLICANS, wake up! Take the suggestions in this post.
For a concise summary about Ranked Choice Voting and Open Primaries, please see Jungle Primaries & Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) Ballot Initiative: A Race to the Bottom: https://eolson47.substack.com/p/jungle-primaries-and-ranked-choice. This article links to several of Tim’s related columns on the topic.
It looks like we have some educational work to do for open primaries and hopefully the caucus goes smoothly so that continues for the Presidential delegate determination.