BATON ROUGE, La. — Tuesday, a bill looking to change how Louisiana holds primary elections made it out of a committee hearing Tuesday and is scheduled to go to the house floor Wednesday.
Supported by Governor Landry, House Bill 17 would require closed primary elections for federal and state offices and local judges. Republican Lafayette Rep. Julie Emerson’s bill would keep Louisiana’s current ‘Jungle Primary’ system for other local races.
WWL Louisiana Political Analyst Clancy Dubos says under the current system, “everybody’s vote counts in every election.
In a Louisiana open primary, the two candidates who receive the most votes, regardless of party affiliation, advance to the general election unless the candidate takes more than 50 percent of the votes.
Governor Landry wants to move to a closed party system where a voter would have to be registered to a specific party in order to cast their vote for the party candidate in the primary.
“It’s about fairness,” said Landry. “It’s about simplicity. It’s about clarity.”
Monday, Landry called the state’s current system a ‘relic of the past.’
“Our Jungle of election system is the only one of its kind in the country,” said Landry.
Dubos says that’s not quite true.
“Louisiana is not the only one,” said Dubos. “We might be the only one that does it exactly like this but there are many versions of a jungle primary, and the truth is only 17 states out of the 50 have closed party primaries.”
According to Dubos, the proposal is garnering criticism on both sides of the aisle.
“In this system, more than a quarter of the voters will not be counted in the first round of elections,” he said.
On social media, Senator Bill Cassidy recorded a video in which he said the closed system would disenfranchise independent voters.
Louisiana State Senator Royce Duplesis told WWL Louisiana, “Nobody in Louisiana is asking for this. If this were to go forward, I think that this is something that were injecting more politics into something that is already too political.”
“It is going to cost I think 90 million dollars for these extra elections,” said Louisiana State Senator Pat Connick.
Dubos believes if this system gets passed and legislators don’t fall in line with what the governor wants, Landry could throw his weight behind an opponent in a primary election.
“The governor wants this because its part of a power grab that will enable him and his oligarch-like financial supporters to be able to threaten republican legislators,” said Dubos.
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