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Illinois Democrats speedily change candidate law; Republicans call measure ‘election interference,' "undemocratic"
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- Authors
- Cole Henke, Danny Connolly
- Published
- May 3 2024
- Word count
- 622 words
Wait, until this law passed candidates could entirely skip engaging in the primary at all? That seems like a remarkably uneven playing field. How does this "stifle the democratic process"? Can someone steelman the Republican's stance on this one, because I just don't get why this isn't an entirely good change.
I think the idea goes something like:
Illinois is an "open" primary state, so non-party members can essentially try to nominate a candidate for a party that the party democracy itself doesn't want, which creates some legitimate reasons to be able to put your name to the ballot irrespective of the results of the primary.
Yeah, IIRC, I've seen some elections where it was two Democrats competing to win and a Republican trying to just get 20% of the vote. But maybe I'm thinking of like Georgia where two Democrats were competing to get into the runoff.
It seems like some of the discontent has to do with the Democrats introducing it at this specific point in time, changing the rules of the upcoming election with not enough time for Republicans to get candidates to primary because they were expecting to use the slate process. If the Democrats were going to pass this bill, they should have introduced it earlier to appear fair.
Political parties aren't official organs of the government to begin with. People should be able to run for government positions regardless of the political party process they did or did not go through. In terms of who parties want to support, that's their business.
The word "official" gets blurrier by the day, but at this point the e.g. Democrat presidential primary is closer to an election than the actual election (which is more like a referendum on whether to abolish democracy).
Political parties ideally should not be official, but thanks to the wonders of FPTP they effectively are.
If there's one thing that Trump has taught us, it's that unwritten laws need to become written laws if they're actually useful.
Right, that's my point. County-level organs of the Republican Party were putting candidates on the general election ballot without them being approved of by the voters in the primary. This law puts a stop to that. It seems we're in agreement that it's good?
At one time, parties actually decided on candidates. For example, at political conventions. But it became more and more of an extended election and parties gradually lost control over who their candidates will be. It’s not necessarily a good thing. If Republican party leaders were in control, they probably wouldn’t have picked Trump.
In California for statewide offices, the process seems to have reached its logical conclusion and parties don’t have any formal control at all. There are many candidates of many parties in the primary, and the top two go on to the general election. It’s essentially the first general election, and in November there’s a runoff.
It seems like the Illinois law that was repealed is a vestige of earlier times when parties actually decided these things?
(“Superdelegates” are another vestige of party leaders having control over the party.)
That's the Republican party's business in the end, how they select candidates. I think the final, actual vote which actually determines the office should be in the hands of the voter, but the collection of people that collectively agree to support (monetarily or voting-wise) one of those candidates can determine which candidate it is however they want.
But if you want the parties to not have any significant influence over who get elected, wouldn't you want them not not be able to let their candidates skip the primary?
That’s not what I said, but also primaries are not part of the official election structure. They are processes invented by the parties to choose the person they want to support. In the modern day they often are a facsimile of a voted election but that’s because that’s what their party members like. They are, in the end, arbitrary.
Basically, laws around voting should be concerned about the actual official voting process, not what extra-governmental organizations like political parties want to do.
If a political party wants to pick their candidate undemocratically, you do you, as long as the vote that matters is democratic.
Interesting. I learned something new today. I had thought that the primaries were an official part of the electoral process, not an unofficial party action.
It seems like it's kind of both, varying by state. It's not like the parties run their own primary elections, though I suppose they could. In most states, it's an official ballot and an official election. The election infrastructure is run by the state. Tampering with the primary would be tampering with an election. It's become more and more a state-run thing. In California, the state decided that primary elections would work differently for offices within the state (not federal), and that was that.
But then you have places like Iowa where it's not an election at all, it's a caucus.
In presidential elections, rules about what what happens after the votes are counted are up to the party. Nationally, Democratic and Republican parties have different rules about delegates, which aren't decided by states at all.
Article from the Chicago Sun-Times with more info:
https://chicago.suntimes.com/elections/2024/05/03/pritzker-signs-slating-election-bill-candidates-primaries-republicans-stealing-election
[Madigan was widely known to be corrupt for his 18 terms as Illinois speaker and is going to be tried on federal racketeering charges this year]