There are few ideas more anti-American than closing primary elections.

That seems to be a big topic again, after Alabama Democratic Party Vice Chair Tabitha Isner last week publicly encouraged Democrats to vote in the upcoming Republican primaries in congressional districts 1, 2 and 7. Specifically, she wants to “knock off” some of the GOP frontrunners in those races. 

And Republicans are mad about it. 

So, they’ve renewed a push that began last year to try and close primary elections in the state, limiting those elections to only the registered members of each party. 

Do you get what that means? 

You have to declare allegiance to a group in order to vote in an election in America. 

Every Founding Father just rolled over in their graves. 

At the rate we’re going in this state, in a few years, we won’t have elections anymore. Just a bunch of rich people will get together every four years to decide who they want to run things and then they’ll send us all letters letting us know who that is. 

We’ve already gerrymandered the districts all to hell and back—to the point that we’ve cut voter participation down to embarrassing levels. The other day, a Democrat won a runoff with less than 2,000 votes. To represent a district of more than 30,000 people in four counties. A Republican won one a few years ago with less than 1,500 votes. 

To put that in perspective, as I was scrolling through TikTok the other day, I stumbled across a live auction for squishy toys—the Nee-Dohs and dumplings that a certain 8-year-old in my house loves to collect—that had more than 2,500 people watching. More people were interested in a color-changing stress relief blob than participated in elections for state reps in Alabama. 

And now y’all want to shrink the pool even more? 

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought the idea here was to elect people who best represent ALL of the people of the district. Did I miss a memo? Did we at some point decide that certain people don’t get a say if they don’t believe the things we want them to? 

Because that’s what closed primaries mean. 

It’s limiting the votes to a select group of people who mostly believe the same things. Who think alike. 

That means, should the candidate elected by that group win, that new lawmaker will be beholden only to those people. He will care only for their issues. He will ignore those who don’t have a vote. 

 And in Alabama today, that’s a whole bunch of people. Because our districts are so heavily gerrymandered. Often, that primary race is the only opportunity the people of the district have to elect a representative of their choosing. Because there aren’t enough voters of the opposing party—by design—to pose a serious challenge, there typically isn’t an opposing party candidate on the ballot. 

There are numerous such races in Alabama this election cycle. In what is supposed to be the most competitive election cycle in 15 years. 

How man? In more than 70 legislative races—over half the field—there is no major-party opponent on the ballot. 

Closing primaries means you basically shut out half the voters in Alabama from even having input on their representatives. Simply because those people have not publicly pledged their loyalty to a party. 

But while the Republicans want to close the primaries to Democratic voters, they don’t want to stop taking their money to hold the elections. They still want those tax dollars to pay for ballots and printing and all of the other costs associated with operating a primary election. 

That’s tens of millions of dollars for a statewide primary. The special primary election being held for the four congressional districts next month will cost taxpayers nearly $5 million. 

So, where do we get our refunds? 

Here’s a crazy idea: instead of closing primaries, how about you field candidates with broad appeal? Field candidates that better represent all the people of the district, not just the far-left or far-right crazies who make the most noise. 

Maybe—just maybe—if we did that we could enjoy fewer arguments about bathrooms and bedrooms and get a legislature that took up issues that might put more money in our pockets, better schools in our neighborhoods and better roads to drive on. 

Or, I suppose, we could take the anti-American, anti-democracy approach of sticking our fingers in our ears and figuring out yet another way to ignore the opinions and viewpoints of those we disagree with.