Serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis. © James Conner.

 

11 June 2014

Additional observations on crossover voting

Some Republicans are alleging that Eric Cantor lost his primary election because Democrats crossed-over to vote for his opponent, a possibility I mentioned in a short post last night. Like Montana, Virginia has an open primary in which crossover voting can and does occur.

The key question, which I raised in a post last week, is whether the crossover votes mattered — and determining that is no easy task.

If the ratio of A Party to B Party primary votes seems out of whack compared to previous elections or other districts, that can indicate crossover voting. But the A:B ratio doesn’t indicate who the crossovers voted for, nor whether enough crossover votes were cast to change the outcome. In the Flathead, I believe there were significant crossover votes in House Districts 7 and 11, and in Senate District 4, but that crossovers probably affected the outcome only in HD-11.

That notwithstanding, there will be calls for a closed primary in Virginia, and Matt Monforton, the Republican nominee in Montana’s HD-69, is calling for a closed primary in Montana (resolution for GOP convention).

I’m not entirely unsympathetic to a closed primary — a political party should be able to choose its candidates without meddling from other political parties — but I think a bigger problem is the low turnout that curses primaries. Just 27.6 percent of Montana’s voting eligible population cast ballots in last week’s primary. Low turnouts diminish the political legitimacy of the winning candidates, making governing more difficult and less certain.

Crossover voting can generate mischief, but it does not improve turnout.