While compiling a database of state primary election laws, I had to make trade- offs between attention to detail and the usefulness of the database. Every state conducts elections slightly differently; the goal of this database was to group laws that were
“similar enough” together to make statistical analysis possible while still capturing what I believed to be the important differences between the types of laws. For example (above), Arizona formally prohibits the participation of the Communist Party in its state politics – a prohibition with likely little bearing (or possibly constitutional footing) today; I have not included information on the formal status of the Communist Party. Other scholars (like Gerber and Morton 1998) have attempted similar categorization exercises, although typically for much shorter periods of time or at a much lower level of specificity. In particular, with this dataset I attempt to break through the tradition of treating primary laws as if they were on a single-dimensional scale from “most open” to “most closed.”
As Kanthak and Morton (2001) and Gerber and Morton (1998) both noted, the tendency to array primary laws along that dimension can create false expectations about
monotonicity. Gerber and Morton (1998) inquired: If a semi-closed primary produces less extreme candidates than a closed primary, does an open primary produce less extreme candidates still? They thought not. To avoid this, I have created a variable that takes into account the basic base type of primary, following three key derivative types:
partisan, nonpartisan, and convention. A convention obviously is not a primary at all. A nonpartisan primary is just a very different institution than an a party primary; since it can pit candidates of the same party against each other in the general election, the nonpartisan primary could potentially generate factions within parties.
Partisan primaries come in several types: open, blanket (a type of open primary), semi-closed, and closed. The only difference between an open primary and a blanket primary is the duration with which a voter must identify with a party: for an open primary, that affiliation must last through the whole ballot while in a blanket primary the affiliation can switch between contests. A semi-closed primary is just a closed primary that allows unaffiliated voters. In recent years after some court decisions, some states have gone to a “party choice” system that allows each party to choose whether or not to use a closed or semi-closed primary. With party choice, it is necessary to establish what the party decided, another feature recorded in the database. These different types within partisan primaries capture varying degrees of openness.
There are other dimensions to consider. First, in several types of primaries, voters may be able to keep their partisan preferences to themselves: the question is to what extent the primary is “private choice.” A nonpartisan primary is private choice by default, as is an open blanket primary. Some open systems can be private choice as well.
Second, some states require large pre-primary hurdles for candidates to make it onto the
primary ballot. These impediments can vary in size and typically involve passing through a party convention. This has little to do with what rule voters use; this has entirely to do with how easy it is for candidates to even get that far. For example, for a long time both Connecticut and Utah had high barriers to candidate ballot access but Connecticut used a closed primary and Utah used an open primary. Third, some states use a “runoff” rule that forces party candidates to get above some fraction of the vote to win their party’s primary (this is an extra – second – primary election, not to be confused with a nonpartisan two-round election). Some states have runoff primaries under both open and closed rules. Fourth, in rare cases parties allowed candidates to “cross-file” and potentially win both party primaries; this type of rule is compatible with many different types of voting schemes.36 What follows is my effort to describe the primary laws from the 1946 primaries through the 2012 primaries in each of these dimensions: basic primary type, openness and closed-ness, the extent of private choice, degree of pre-primary requirements, runoff rules, and cross-filing.
Alabama
Alabama proves to be one of the easier states to code: the state used a traditional
“southern runoff” primary over this entire period. I have coded it as an “open” party primary with a runoff from 1946–2012. The Secretary of State’s website confirms that this system is still in use, in much the same way as it has been for about a century. Since this process does require asking for the party ballot, Alabama’s open system is not
“private choice.” There are only two complications: parties formally can choose if the
36 I do not end up making much use of this cross-filing variable; in a model with state fixed effects --- it is just too uncommon.
second round of their primary is ‘open or closed’ and the state does not actually mandate the use of the direct primary.
Technically, as mentioned in Bott (1990), parties have a choice between the runoff primary and a convention. McNitt (1980) observed that the Republican Party used the convention option through 1968. I have not coded this differently in the database, though; instead, I have treated the Republican Party in Alabama from 1946–1968 as I treat other minor parties throughout the database: I ignore the separate rules that apply to them. In many states, minor parties have different ballot access requirements. Since, though, any ballot access requirements that applied to the Republicans in the segregationist South would have yielded the same lopsided general election results, I do not think this causes too much of a problem. Once the Republicans started to even contemplate competitiveness, they adopted the direct primary.
At the moment, the two major parties differ on who they allow to vote in the 2nd round. If a runoff occurs, Democrats prohibit anyone who voted for the Republicans in the first round from participating. The Republicans do not.37 This split tradition goes back at least as far as 2004.38 It appears very difficult to actually enforce these rules without registration by party; this is likely more of a social norm than an actively enforced rule. In the data set, I do not account for whether or not the second round is open or closed by party.
The runoff primary in Alabama generates controversy through the state’s troubled history of racial inclusion. In the 1960s and 1970s, black voters and politicians re-
37 The Alabama 2012 Voter’s Guide, published by the Secretary of State, has this information:
http://www.sos.state.al.us/downloads/election/2012/2012VoterGuide.pdf (last accessed 03/13/13).
38 The Alabama 2004 Voter’s Guide, published by the Secretary of State, can be found here:
http://www.sos.state.al.us/downloads/dl3.aspx?trgturl=election/2004/vg2004v2.pdf&trgtfile=vg2004.pdf (last accessed 03/13/13).
entered the political sphere after the passage of the Voting Rights Act. One news article described the first round of the 1966 primary as a disappointment for black Alabamans:
Negroes sought nomination to their first legislative seats since reconstruction today in the Alabama Democratic primary runoff.
Bloc voting was urged by both white segregationists and Negro leaders.
...
Victories by Mrs. Lurleen Wallace, wife of Gov. George Wallace, in the race for governor and Sen. John Sparkman D-Ala., in the first primary took much of the interest out of the runoff. Mrs. Wallace, seeking to succeed her husband, defeated nine men in her landslide majority.
...
The primary taught Negroes a lesson in practical politics, [Dr. John]
Nixon [of the NAACP] said. 'We don't have the vote in large enough number to elect (statewide) but we surely do have the power to deny.' The Justice Department retained its interest in Alabama's primary elections. Atty. Gen. Nicholas Katzenback Monday ordered federal voting observers into the counties of Greene, Sumter, Marengo, Perry and Hale, where the observers were sent for the first primary.39
If true at all, the “power to deny” would be relatively limited, as segregationists continued to fare well in Alabama politics.
Black voters in Alabama did not have the power to deny in 1970. They thought they might. One Democratic candidate for Governor, Albert Brewer, challenged famed segregationist George C. Wallace in the 1970 primary and had the support of black voters. In May, around the time of the first of two rounds of the primary, one newspaper article reported:
39 UPI. 1966. "Alabama election under federal eye." The Press-Courier. May 31. Page 2. Available online at:
http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=YQtSAAAAIBAJ&sjid=AzUNAAAAIBAJ&pg=5315,5460564&d q=alabama+primary+election+runoff&hl=en (last accessed 03/12/13).
Black leaders claim that Negro voters, whose numbers have increased by 61 percent in Alabama since the federal voting rights act was enacted in 1966, will make the difference.
The predominantly Negro Democratic Conference gave its support to one of the candidates–reportedly Brewer–last weekend but made no public announcement of his name, choosing instead to pass the word along during the week at a series of local meetings.
Joe Reed, the conference chairman and one of 14 Negroes running for seats in the all-white state legislature, said only that “the black voters will decide who will be the next governor of Alabama.”40
Wallace came in second in the first round of the primary, with 42 percent to Brewer’s 43 percent. However, Brewer only managed to increase his share to 48 percent in the runoff; Wallace would win with 52 percent of the vote.41
Southern runoff primaries periodically produce salient examples of how institutional rules matter. At least in 1970, the rules enabled a reversal of fortune. Under a traditional one-round open primary, Wallace might have lost – although that is far from assured. Since the 15 percent of Alabama voters who selected Charles Woods (the third candidate) likely knew Woods was unlikely to win, and they seem to have broken for Wallace in the second round, it is possible that these voters would have voted tactically for Wallace in the first round if the rules were not the same. In any case, though, Brewer came in first place in the first round and second place in the second round; this runoff rule seems sufficiently important to consider to merit a variable in the dataset.
Alaska
40 Associated Press. 1970. "Wallace's Political Reputation At Stake in Alabama Primary." Daytona Beach Morning Journal. Monday, May 4. Page 8. Available online at
http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=6IkeAAAAIBAJ&sjid=o8sEAAAAIBAJ&pg=889,1060045&dq=a labama+primary+election+runoff&hl=en (last accessed 03/12/13).
41 Alabama primary elections, 1970. (2003). CQ voting and elections collection (Web site). Washington, DC: CQ Press. Retrieved from http://library.cqpress.com/elections/avp1970-AL1
Alaska entered the Union as the 49th state in 1960, along with Hawaii. Although the state apparently used a “blanket” primary in territorial elections before statehood, in 1960 Alaska started out using a traditional open primary with private choice. The official Alaskan primary election history produced by the state (the only state to produce something like this) mentions that “voters marked a box indicating they were voting Democrat or Republican. If they voted for candidates from more than one party, their ballots were invalidated.”42
In 1967, Alaska reverted to the blanket primary. Alaska used the blanket primary until the early 1990s. The Republican Party objected to the blanket system and the state negotiated to use a variant of the ‘party choice’ primary. Unlike in many states, though, the Republicans allowed nonpartisans to vote on their ballot while Democrats allowed nonpartisans, other partisans, and Republicans to vote on their ballot. The coding scheme I devised does not well separate this type of party choice primary from others that are more restrictive. The “party choice” variables for each party should be interpreted as “at least allowed nonpartisans,” although the Democratic ballot in Alaska would prove to be even more open than that. Notably, Republicans held the governorship (Wally Hinkel) in the early 1990s, so the respective decisions of the parties mirrors the trend evident in some other states: strong parties tend to prefer closed primaries to gain ideological purity while weaker parties tend to prefer more open primaries to try to gain competitiveness.
In 1996 Alaska’s Supreme Court upheld the blanket primary, a short-lived in victory. Due to the California Democratic Party v. Jones case in 2000, Alaska had to revert back to the rules used in 1992 and 1994 for the 2000 primary season. Ironically,
42 http://www.elections.alaska.gov/doc/forms/H42.pdf, last accessed 03/14/13.
because of the timing differences between California and Alaska, California still used the blanket primary in 2000; the court issued its decision in June. The Alaska system allowed unaffiliated voters still to choose which ballot to select on election day but they now had to vote only on candidates of a single party. The system also allowed each party to choose on a year-by-year basis who could vote on their ballot (which they did, incidentally, by allowing other parties to add their candidates’ names to the ballot).
The party choices vary quite a bit each year. In 1992 and 1994, Democrats allowed Republican participation but Republicans did not allow Democratic participation.
In 2002 the state ran a traditional semi-closed primary with same-day unaffiliated choice.
In 2004 and 2006 Republicans only allowed nonpartisans and independents access to their ballot; the Democrats allowed everybody except Republicans (there are several minor Alaskan parties). In 2008, 2010, and 2012 though, Democrats allowed Republicans to vote for their candidates. The Alaskan system also could be considered a system of partitioned cross-filing; I have not coded it as a cross-filing system because most years Democratic candidates cannot appear on Republican ballots (unlike how California’s era of cross-filing worked).43
Alaska’s peculiarities have flummoxed political scientists for some time. For example, McNitt (1980) has the state listed (correctly) as “open” before 1967 and as a
“blanket” system afterwards. Jewell (1977) has Alaska listed as “open/blanket” for 1950- 1976. An article in the Congressional Quarterly incorrectly lists Alaska as “open” for 1968.44 McGee et al. (2012; see their notes on their Table A8) treated Alaska after the
43 Gaines and Cho (2002), in their essay on cross-filing in California, note the similarity of California’s practice to that in New York but do not mention cross-filing in Alaska.
44 Nominating procedures, 1965-1968 overview. (1969). Congress and the nation, 1965-1968 (Vol. 2).
Washington, DC: CQ Press. Retrieved from http://library.cqpress.com/elections/catn65-0000762881
Jones decision as “semi-open” seemingly (this is not completely clear from their paper) treating both parties equally. This helps further the contrast with California, which McGhee et al. classify as “semi-closed” (as do I) over the same period. McGhee et al.
also make the excellent point that the Jones decision created an exogenous reason to change primary laws in Washington and Alaska (how exogenous this is in California, since the parties sued, is less obvious). So, while Alaska poses a lot of classification difficulty, the state may also offer some important variation to determine the effects of adopting different primary laws.
Arizona
Arizona holds closed primaries. NicNitt (1980) lists Arizona’s laws as “closed”
from 1954 to 1974; Jewell (1977) lists the state as “closed” for 1950–1976. Bott (1990) also identifies the state as using a “closed” rule, with a 50-day requirement to declare or change affiliation before the primary (pp. 22). Bott (1990) further notes that there are no pre-primary party hurdles for candidates to pass in Arizona; the sum total of these rules builds to the most standard type of closed primary. Kanthak and Morton (2001, pp. 119) also classify Arizona as fully closed.
Kanthak and Morton (2001) did not mention that Arizona had just changed its primary election law to be semi-closed via ballot measure.45 Starting in 1999, Arizona began to use a semi-closed system for non-presidential nominating primary elections; the state passed this law in 1998 with little enough fanfare that confusion continued to exist
45 Proposition 103, 1998. The text of the proposition and the ballot statements are available at:
http://www.azsos.gov/election/1998/info/pubpamphlet/Prop103.html (last accessed 03/15/13). It passed (results available at: http://www.azsos.gov/election/1998/General/Canvass1998GE.pdf, last accessed 03/15/13). Notably both Republicans and Democrats supported it; the Libertarian party opposed it. Also note that the text of the proposition violates the spirit of Tashjian and, if challenged under the same reasoning in California Democratic Party v. Jones would likely be overturned: the law requires that the primaries be semi-closed rather than closed (the objection of the Libertarians).
at least through the 2008 presidential primaries.46 This system does not have private choice; voters pick up a separate ballot.47
Apparently Republicans considered closing their half of the primary in 2010.
That year John McCain faced a Tea-Party backed candidate, J.D. Hayworth, in the Republican Primary. As in other states, the debates about the rules indicate a belief among the party elite that some rules favor some candidates. In this case, it appears that some in the party elite wanted to close the primary to give the challenger against McCain a better shot; they presumed McCain would do better among the unaffiliated voters who selected the Republican primary. One report summarized the situation as:
Hayworth and McCain, who is seeking a fifth term, will gnaw on each other until the August primary, the rules of which are still unclear…
Republican primaries have been open to unaffiliated voters, but in January, when Hayworth's candidacy was still embryonic, the state party opted for a closed primary, on the sound principle that party members — there are 1.12 million registered — should pick those who represent the party. The U.S. Supreme Court has held that the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of association, which "plainly presupposes a freedom not to associate," broadly protects parties' rights to define their identities by controlling their nominating processes.
McCain understandably wants the primary open to non-Republicans: A closed primary would favor Hayworth, many of whose supporters are the sort of high-octane conservatives who will vote in an Arizona August…48
Somehow, McCain’s camp won.49 Unaffiliated voters could choose either party primary on election day.50
46 See Ryman, Anne. 2007. “Independents can’t vote in Feb. 5 primary election: Growing Ariz. Political force shut out of presidential primary.” The Arizona Republic. December 26. Online at:
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/1226independents1226.html (last accessed 3/15/13).
47 See A.R.S. (2011) SS 16-467; Section A specifies the separate ballots; Section B specifies the semi- closed rule; Section C rules out cross-filing.
48 Will, George. 2010. “McCain in fight.” The Topeka Capital-Journal. April 3. Available online at:
http://cjonline.com/opinion/2010-04-03/column_mccain_in_fight#.TwJur_KjdH0 (last accessed 03/15/13).
If the Republican Party (or Democratic Party) wanted to close their primary, they would likely have a strong court case. Between Tashjian (ability to move to an semi- closed system from a closed system) and Jones (blanket primary violates party’s association rights), it seems that both fully closed and semi-closed systems, when mandated by state law, are vulnerable to “party-choice” challenges. It seems likely that the Arizona law exists as it does today because there is insufficient will in either party to mount and sustain a challenge in court.
For Arizona, I coded the primary through 1998 as “closed,” and then as “semi- closed” afterwards. Those types of systems do not operate with the same kind of private choice as some open primary states, so I have given the state a score of “0” for private choice. I have also given it a score of “0” for a pre-primary nominating procedure; it has nothing like Colorado (mild) or Connecticut (severe). Arizona also does not have runoffs. Since Republicans did not close their primary in 2010, and the state technically mandates a semi-closed rule, I have not scored the ‘party choice’ variables --- although, in the analysis, I will attempt to capture the sense that these legally vulnerable rules exist with the acquiescence of both parties. Voters also enshrined a preference for the status quo by defeating at the polls Proposition 121 (in 2012) that would have given Arizona a top-two primary system like California.51
49 Despite some reporting to the contrary, a lawsuit challenging Arizona’s semi-closed primary law may never have been launched at all. See Bodfield, Rhonda. 2010. “State GOP looking to close primary to independents.” Arizona Daily Star. February 19. Available online at: (last accessed 03/15/13).
http://azstarnet.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/elections/state-gop-looking-to-close-its-primary-to- independents/article_dd8d890f-d762-5591-bba8-1495bbc75cd8.html
50 Medrano, Lourdes. 2010. “Arizona primary: Why McCain is set to beat the anti-incumbent backlash.”
The Christian Science Monitor. August 24. Available online at:
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Elections/Senate/2010/0824/Arizona-primary-Why-McCain-is-set-to- beat-the-anti-incumbent-backlash (last accessed 03/13/15).
51 Dungan, Ron, Mary Jo Pitzl, Yvonne Wingett Sanchez and Mary K. Reinhart. 2012. “Arizona voters defeat five ballot measures.” The Republic. November 7. Available online at: