The Louisiana Legislature's special redistricting and election session begins today, and one of the items on the call includes the possibility of moving Louisiana to a closed primary election system. One of Louisiana's senators says that switch is a terrible idea.
In fact, Senator Bill Cassidy (R-Baton Rouge) says Louisiana's Republican leaderships would be making a big mistake if they made that change.
"It's going to cost about $90 million that's not paid for. It's going to come from something else," Cassidy told WWL's Tommy Tucker, noting that the cost overrun would be the result of the extra elections needed under a closed primary. "If you look at polling, only three percent of people in Louisiana would rather spend that money on elections as opposed to infrastruction, levees, fighting crime, and improving education."
In addition to costing the state money, Cassidy says a closed primary system would cut out the state's independent voters out of the primary system. Cassidy says nearly one-third of all Americans identify as an independent. According the Louisiana Secretary of State's Office, independents make up just over a quarter of the state's electorate.
"Closed primaries started back in 1940 when 95 percent of people were either Republican or Democrat," Cassidy said. "If you going to design a system today, you would not design it to where it was closed, because you would disenfranchise one third of the people."
Cassidy says Republicans could hurt themselves politically by changing to a closed party primary, especially because the Republican Party came to power under the current open primary system.
"It's kind of ironic because under this system, you might want to vote for our guy, but we're not going to let you into the country club," Cassidy said. "You can't vote for us even if we're excited that you would want to."