RSA 654:34, which governs how voters may change party registration, makes a bizarre distinction. In one section (I), it says that if you decide to change from one party to another party on the day of a primary, you can’t vote in the primary of your new party.
But in the very next section (II), it says that if you decide to change from having no party to being in a party, you can vote in the primary of your new party.
Say what? Whether you’re registered as a Democrat, or you’re registered as undeclared, in either case you have told the state, under penalty of perjury, that you are not a Republican.
So in both cases, to let you vote in the Republican primary makes a mockery of the whole idea of a party primary.
Would you be happy if a million Chinese nationals showed up on the first Tuesday in November, voted for who they thought should be our president, and then went back home?
That’s pretty much how GOP members feel when a couple hundred thousand non-Republicans show up on primary day to vote for who they think should be the party’s nominee.
But to make a distinction between cases I and II is like something out of Alice in Wonderland:
Before today, Tweedledum was not a Republican in a different way than Tweedledee was not a Republican, so Tweedledum can have a ballot, but Tweedledee can’t. Or maybe it’s’ the other way around.
Suppose Tweedledum and Tweedledee both show up at their local polling place registered as undeclared. Tweedledum switches to being a Republican for the day, and is handed a ballot. Tweedledee switches to being a Democrat for the day… but changes his mind, and switches again to being a Republican for the day. So he doesn’t get a ballot.
Is this not insane? It reminds me of nothing so much as the ATF ruling that if you have an AR-15 with a pistol brace, it’s a pistol, but once you put the brace against your shoulder, it becomes a short-barreled rifle, even if no one else sees it.
As it is currently written, RSA 654:34 encourages people to pretend that they are not affiliated with a party, not because it expresses their independence but because it enables their capacity for interference in the affairs of either party.
If we want to discourage that kind of interference, we should let only registered party members vote in the primaries of their parties.
On the other hand, if we want to encourage it, then we should just let everyone (including people who aren’t registered to vote at all) vote in all the primaries at all the locations. Ballots for everyone, everywhere!
But to jumble things up this way is just one more reason why anyone with sense must eventually agree with Mr. Bumble that ‘the law is an ass, an idiot’ and stop paying attention to it entirely — whether regarding primaries or anything else.
Which is to say, you can’t enact stupid laws without making the law itself seem stupid. So we should stop doing that.
