How incumbent Political Parties can Strangle Competition (& one reason our politics are so bad, so devoid of new ideas):
State can limit party primary election, court rules
1 hour, 37 minutes ago
story.news.yahoo.com
A divided U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Monday that a state can restrict participation in a primary election to the party's own members and to independent voters.
By a 6-3 vote, the high court rejected a constitutional challenge to an Oklahoma election law that prohibits political parties from opening their primaries to other registered voters.
The state Libertarian Party, which wanted to have Democrats and Republicans vote in its primary in hopes of attracting more members, brought the lawsuit.
It said the Oklahoma election law violated its constitutional rights to freedom of speech and freedom of political association under the First Amendment.
Oklahoma said 24 of the 50 states have some form of primary election system that restricts voting to the political party's own members or to its own members and independents.
The states are Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, West Virginia and Wyoming.
Twenty-six states have some form of an open primary system. Of those, Alaska and Utah give the party the option of opening up its primary while the others allow voters, regardless of party affiliation, to pick the primary in which they vote.
The justices reversed a U.S. appeals court ruling that declared the Oklahoma law unconstitutional. Justice Clarence Thomas said for the court majority that any burden imposed by Oklahoma system is minor and justified by legitimate state interests.
Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissented.
"The court's decision today diminishes the value of two important rights protected by the First Amendment: the individual citizen's right to vote for the candidate of her choice and a political party's right to define its own mission," Stevens wrote.
The majority opinion "has little to support it other than a naked interest in protecting the two major parties," Stevens concluded.
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