South Carolina Republican Party leaders filed a federal lawsuit this week to win what the state’s GOP-controlled legislature has repeatedly refused to give them: a closed primary system that would require all S.C. voters to register by party.
“In December of last year, our state executive committee voted to give our legislature one last chance to get partisan voter registration passed in our state,” S.C. GOP Chairman Drew McKissick said in a July 8 social media video. “Well now, we’re going to court.”
Under current state law, which has its roots in civil-rights-era federal court rulings that dismantled the Jim Crow primary system that systematically denied Blacks the right to vote, S.C. voters can opt to participate in the primary of their choice, either Democratic or Republican, in any given election season.
According to the lawsuit, that option violates the Republican Party’s First Amendment right to freedom of association, a legal theory also being tested in a similar suit filed by the Texas Republican Party. What’s more, it claims that allowing any voter to participate in GOP primaries allows Democrats to make mischief by crossing party lines and supporting weaker GOP candidates.
Forcing South Carolina voters to register with the state as Republicans, Democrats or Independents and then allowing the parties to close their primaries to all but their own members would eliminate that concern, the suit argues.
But opponents, including Republican Gov. Henry McMaster, note that this alleged mischief doesn’t actually seem to be happening. And the proof, they say, is in the electoral pudding: S.C. Republicans currently hold every state constitutional office, enjoy supermajorities in the S.C. House and Senate, and control eight of nine slots in the state’s federal delegation, including both U.S. Senate seats.
Critics also note that the state of South Carolina pays for the parties’ primaries, complicating the claim that the GOP is essentially a private club that should be able to enforce private membership rules about who can and can’t participate.
No hearings in the matter have been announced.
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