Regarding the editorial “Opening primaries isn’t simple, but it deserves debate” (March 18, TribLive): If one thinks of voting as a form of expression protected by the First Amendment, it becomes easier, if not unavoidable, to conclude that closed primaries, ranked choice voting and gerrymandering are unconstitutional. Oddly, and without any support in logic or common sense, opponents of ranked choice voting claim it interferes with free expression. Likewise the argument that open primaries “dilut(e) the votes of party members” is specious.
Who is the First Amendment meant to protect? Individuals, or political parties?
George Washington, perhaps the most prominent of the Framers of the Constitution, was pretty clear (and prescient) when he warned in his 1796 Farewell Address that “(Political parties) may now and then answer popular ends, (but) they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.”
Bruce Wilder
New Orleans, La.