Primary Election

• Author: David Adamany
• Pages: 2006-2007

Page 2006

The primary election for selecting candidates is a uniquely American innovation. First adopted in Wisconsin in 1905, it has since spread to every other state. Generally it is the required method for selecting major POLITICAL PARTIES ' nominees, whose names are automatically placed on the general election ballot, and for narrowing the field in nonpartisan elections.

The Supreme Court has not heard a modern constitutional challenge to state authority to compel political parties

Page 2007

to select their candidates at primaries or to define party membership for these purposes. In Cousins v. Wigoda (1975), however, the Supreme Court held that Illinois could not require the Democratic National Convention to seat delegates selected in the state's primary; and in Democratic Party v. LaFollette (1981) the Court held that Wisconsin's delegates could not be bound by state law to follow candidate preferences expressed by voters in the state's presidential primary. In both cases, the Justices declared that the "party and its adherents enjoy a constitutionally protected right of political association." And in Democratic Party the Court said that "the freedom to associate ? necessarily presupposes the freedom to identify the people who constitute the association, and to limit association to those people only." The Justices recognized state interests in the conduct of primary elections, however, and their decisions specifically addressed attempts to regulate the conduct of national party conventions and delegates. States might be able to limit the privilege of automatic access to the ballot to those parties conforming with state primary laws.

The Supreme Court has upheld state primary laws that protect the interests of political parties. In 1976 it affirmed a lower court judgment upholding a state's closed primary against a challenge that it abridged the right to vote and violated the RIGHT OF PRIVACY in political affiliation and belief. Similarly, the Court upheld, in Rosario v. Rockefeller (1973), an extended waiting period for voters wishing to change party registration, thus protecting party primaries from invasion by opposition party adherents and from casual participation by independent voters. But in Kusper v. Pontikes (1973), the Court acknowledged a competing interest in voter participation by rejecting a waiting period so long that the voter wishing to change party affiliation was excluded entirely from at least one primary...