Defense 2025

Texas

The Republican Party of Texas has introduced proposed legislation to strip back many voting rights from Texans including closing the primaries that will effectively shut out millions of independent voters. 

Two bills have been pre-filed by Representatives Cain and Schofield, both of which seek to codify closed primaries to protect “the integrity of the Republican Primary Election.”

One thing missing? The Republican party doesn’t pay for those primaries, Texan taxpayers do. 

Indiana 

ICYMI: A new Indiana House Bill (1029) has been introduced to make Indiana a closed primary state by forcing ALL voters to affiliate with a party in order to vote in primary elections. 

As some politicians on the ground are pointing out, closing Indiana’s primaries only guarantees chaos and that many voters simply don’t want to have the R or D label next to their name. 

If you live in Indiana or Texas and want to participate in our efforts to defeat these bills, please email us at [email protected] .

2024 Analysis Shows the Undeniable Force of the Independent Vote

Independent voters continue to defy conventional expectations for voting and in a new study out from Arizona State University’s Center for an Independent and Sustainable Democracy (CISD) in collaboration with Independentvoting shows that “despite the claim that they are ‘party leaners’ they were not committed to candidates of a single party.” 

Voters that helped elect President-Elect Trump ALSO voted for Democrats in key Senate races–they’ve again proven that their voting behavior cannot be predicted. 

Other key findings: 

• Independent voters were 34% of the voting electorate in 2024
• Independent Behavior "is often shaped by the candidates, the political climate, and events leading up to an election."
• Not only a drop in candidate favorability, but an increase in "lesser of two evils" voting.
• Independent voters want to see more cooperation from lawmakers and political leaders.

Thom Reilly, a professor at ASU’s School of Public Affairs and CISD co-director cites these new findings as indicative of just how much parties are going to have to change the way they run campaigns:  

“Parties using their traditional campaigns of just going after Republicans and Democrats isn’t going to cut it in states like Arizona. You’re going to have to pay attention to this growing block of individuals that are shunning parties.”

As IVN stated in their coverage:

Read the full report here.

As Open Primaries continues to build our litigation strategy and overall focus on the courts, this new section of the newsletter will on occasion offer my thoughts, musings and a discussion of recent legal developments of importance to the primary reform movement.

There’s been quite a lot of coverage lately of No Labels lawsuits against various Democratic Party aligned organizations and operatives that sought to derail its 3rd party presidential bid. There has been little focus, though, on a lawsuit brought by No Labels that was just argued before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals this Monday. 

In No Labels Party v Fontes, 24-563, five members of No Labels (which qualified as a party to run candidates in Arizona in 2024) had filed to run for down ballot office as members of the party. No Labels sued the AZ SOS to have them disqualified, claiming party officials had only intended to run a presidential candidate and that they had an absolute first amendment right to approve who could run (and for what offices) from their party. 

A federal judge blocked the SOS from recognizing those candidates in January 2024 and they failed to make the ballot. The SOS appealed. He warned that the ruling could keep the nearly 19,000 members of the No Labels party from voting in a primary (no candidates, no primary), and the precedent could allow party bosses to decide who can run for office from any party.

The 3 judge panel in Monday’s oral arguments seemed to favor the SOS position. If the SOS does indeed prevail, it will be a significant win for voters against the party bosses who too often want to limit their choices at the ballot box. It also goes to show that anti-voter sentiment runs deep, even among certain elements of the “reform” world.

First Primary Buzz Discussion of 2025

On Thursday January 30th at 2pm, we’re hosting our first Primary Buzz Discussion of 2025 and it’s one you don’t want to miss. Open Primaries Founder & President John Opdycke is swapping roles and will be interviewed by our guest moderator Chloe Akers–the Founder and CEO of The Best of Tennessee–an organization focused on educating voters about the importance of participating in primary elections and bringing more “complexity” to political conversation.

Opdycke and Akers will have an honest, open and forward-looking discussion on where we are as a movement and how we build a powerful going-forward strategy. 

Sign up, bring your questions and join the conversation to get us off on the right foot in 2025.  It’s also recommended that you read John’s year end report in advance.

Have a great weekend,

The Open Primaries Team