Crossover Voting: A Way to Have an Impact

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

I am a Democrat in southern Missouri, an outcast of sorts and definitely an oddity.   It is not unusual on a general election day in November for about half of the races on local ballots in this part of the state  to have only one candidate - a Republican.  We are basically a strong Republican backwater in a fairly strong Republican state.

The real races occur on the primary election day in August,  It is then that each party winnows down their lists of candidates for each office and comes up with their one official candidate for that office.  The Republicans in Missouri, and especially in southern Missouri, have many choices, and the Democrats seldom have any races between candidates vying for the same office, an office that Republicans will win handily in November anyway.

Elections aren't much fun for Democrats down in the sticks of southern Missouri.

But Missouri has an election system that makes it possible for any citizen to have more of an impact than their party affiliation might normally allow.  Missouri does not register its voters by political party, and the state has an "open primary" system which means that any registered voter and walk into the polls on primary election day in August and choose whichever ballot he or she prefers.    And in order to have any impact at all on who is finally elected to office, this Missouri Democrat will often choose to vote a Republican primary ballot.

It's called "crossover" voting, and there are a couple of good reasons for engaging in the practice.  First, it is sometimes used to help the other party elect the best person.  That happened in Georgia last week in the Republican race for secretary of state.  The incumbent, Brad Raffensperger,  earned the rage and wrath of Donald Trump when he refused to change the Georgia vote totals in the 2020 election, totals that gave a Georgia victory to Joe Biden.  And, to pour salt in the wound, Raffensperger taped a telephone call from Trump in which the then President tried to coerce Raffensperger into "finding" more Republican votes - and then the secretary of state went so far as to make that tape public!

So an angry and bitter Donald Trump was quick to endorse a primary opponent to Raffensperger.  There were four running against the incumbent, and Trump publicly chose Jody Hice, a former congressman and a supporter of Trump's big lie about the election being fraudulent.  In Georgia if no candidate takes over 50% of the vote in the primary, a run-off election is held between the top two vote-getters, so Trump either needed Hice to win outright or to place first or a strong second and take Raffensperger down in a run-off election.

But Raffensperger won the primary with 52% of the votes, which meant that Hice was out and Raffensperger would be the Republican candidate in the fall.  Trump's candidate for Georgia governor, David Perdue, also lost on Election Day - bigly - but it was the Raffensperger win that really galled and mystified Trump.

It now looks as though Brad Raffensperger won that primary election outright with crossover votes.  A review of voting in Georgia shows that more than 37,000 people who had cast ballots as Democrats in the last primary election chose to vote a Republican ballot this time - and Brad Raffenserger cleared the 50% marker in this primary election by just 27,000 votes!

And Trump is pissed.   Cry me a river.

The other reason to "crossover" vote us to help the other party elect their most "beatable" candidate.  Missouri has an one US Senate seat coming up for election in November.  It is a seat that should remain safely in the Republican Party, but the GOP is involved in a dogfight over the seat with four prominent candidates for the position with a couple a minor candidates thrown in for good measure.  Of the four major Republican contenders, all are conservative troglodytes with their tongues firmly glued to Donald Trump's full diaper, and none would make a decent senator - and none would be a markedly worse senator than any of the other three.

Meanwhile, Missouri Democrats have two fairly substantial candidates, either one of whom could win the contest if Republicans choose the right (wrong) candidate.  And the Missouri Republican Party has one major candidate who gives party leaders plenty of sleepless nights - and that man, a former governor who was involved in some well-publicized kinky sex and blackmail and has been accused of domestic abuse, is currently leading in the polls.  He would be the GOP's weakest candidate in the general election and could lose - a perfect candidate for crossover voters - like myself - to consider.

It's one way to have an impact.