Should open primaries be adopted by Illinois?

By REP. DAVID ROBINSON A Democrat from Springfield serving his first term in the General Assembly, Robinson has been a leading advocate of the open primary and is on the board of the Coalition for Political Honesty.

THE Coalition for Political Honesty has announced its major effort to get the "open primary" issue on the ballot in 1978 as an advisory referendum. The law requires that we first obtain signatures from 10 per cent (625,000) of the registered voters in the state to put the question on the ballot statewide. If we can get the proposal before the voters (targeted for the November 1978 general election) and it passes, it will only be advisory to the General Assembly. But I am convinced that we will build the citizen pressure that will push open primary reform through the Illinois House and Senate.

Next step in reform
An open primary for Illinois is long overdue. The people phrase the reason time after time in almost the exact same words: "It's nobody's damn business how I vote." In poll after poll, 80 per cent of the people say they favor an open primary. They want to end the present system in which everyone is on file down at city hall or the county clerk's office for how they voted in the primary — Democratic, Republican or not at all. In this, the citizens have a better sense of the historical development of our political parties and the nominating processes than the professional party leaders who now stand in the way of the open primary.

Over the last 200 years the trend has been toward broadening the participation in nominating candidates, taking control away from the few and giving it to millions. The early political parties around 1800 developed the caucus method of nominations in which the party members of Congress nominated their presidential candidates and those in the state legislature nominated statewide candidates. The people had no say. Only those already holding political office made the decisions. In language that those fighting for an open primary echo today, the reformers of the 1830's called the entrenched nominating procedure a tool of bossism and special interests.

By the end of the 1830's the party convention replaced the caucus system as the way in which candidates were nominated. Delegates elected at the precinct level chose delegates to town and county conventions. These conventions in turn sent delegates to state conventions. At all of these levels, candidates were chosen. While this broadened participation from perhaps a few hundred to a few thousand, the convention proved just as susceptible to boss rule. The Progressives and Populists of the late 19th century charged that the delegates were bought and sold and that a few power brokers made decisions in the proverbial smoke-filled rooms, going into the convention only to have their deals rubber-stamped by the manipulated delegates.

The reformers of the early 1900's forced through a major revolution in the methods used to nominate candidates — the direct primary. The first use of the direct primary, in which voters directly cast ballots to choose candidates who would later run in a general election, occurred in 1842 when the Democratic party in Crawford County, Pa., used it to nominate local officials. In 1890 South Carolina became the first state to have a primary for governor and other statewide leaders. By 1917, all but four states used direct primaries. Within those few years, the power to nominate candidates was extended from thousands nationwide to millions. But just as in the past when nomination reforms of one era were found wanting in later years, so now there is a call to once again broaden the nominating procedure with an open primary.

The open primary is part of this historical continuum because we have found that forcing people to declare party preference excludes many from participating. And the fewer who vote, the easier it is for the political bosses to determine the outcome. The rule of thumb in Illinois Democratic primaries is simple: if under one million vote, the Chicago machine will dominate the returns. But if the vote is higher, it means that the uncontrolled are voting (in Chicago as well as in the suburbs and downstate) and an antimachine candidate has a chance. The more we do to open up the primary, the more we open up Illinois politics.

Success in other states
The arguments against this move are similar to those used by politicians in the past when the caucus and convention systems were challenged. "You'll weaken the parties," they say. "You'll allow outsiders to control our party decision." The best proof against these charges is that 10 states have tried the open primary, and it is immensely popular with the voters in those states: Michigan, Idaho, Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota, Utah, Vermont, Wisconsin, Alaska and Washington. Does anybody claim that the two-party system is weaker in those states than in one-party Chicago or DuPage County? A May 1975 report by the Legislative Council on closed primaries stated there is no evidence that the open primary

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24 / November 1977 / Illinois Issues

Yes:
The open primary benefits people not party bosses and if the people approve it in the advisory referendum, the legislature may be hard pressed not to adopt it

system has led to party raiding in which members of one party cross lines to nominate the weakest candidate of the opposite party.

Under the system proposed by the Coalition for Political Honesty, voters would be limited to casting ballots in only one party's primary, but the choice of party would be made by the voter in the privacy of the voting booth. This is in line with the principle of secrecy of the ballot, and it meets the objections to declaring affiliation. The present closed system excludes those who fear that the public record of their party preference will be used by politicians to affect their employment, municipal services, business success or social standing in the community. Under the proposed open primary, the files which allow patronage abuses would be eliminated. Furthermore, under the proposed system, candidates will be promoted not just because of party loyalty but because they can appeal to a broader cross section of voters. The open primary promises expansion of the electorate, a more discerning and independent minded electorate and less boss control of politics.

Pressure on legislature
But the Illinois legislature has failed to approve open primaries. While over 60 House members of both parties sponsored open primary legislation in the last session, the political leaders of both parties were able to stop passage. A number of members said, in effect, "I am for the open primary but my county chairmen would have my head if I voted for it." The advisory referendum will be the countervailing force to those county and ward leaders. The voters' right to the advisory referendum is strongly protected by Illinois law (section 28-1 of the Election Code) and state Supreme Court decisions. The nonbinding referendum was used in the early decades of this century to press for women's suffrage, direct election of U.S. senators, abolition of prohibition and for introduction of the direct primary itself. Although it has fallen into disuse since the 1930's, the Supreme Court decision in Payne v. Emerson prevented any restraint on the right to an advisory referendum saying that "to deprive the electorate of their basic constitutional entitlement to expressions of opinion and to free elections cannot be countenanced." In pressing ahead with the petition drive for a referendum on the open primary, the Coalition for Political Honesty is revivifying a healthy tool of democracy, the referendum. When the open primary is endorsed by millions at the 1978 general election, how long can the legislature hold out?ž

26 / November 1977 / Illinois Issues