by Pa Rock
Missouri Citizen Journalist
Voters in Missouri do not register by political parties. The state has an "open primary" system in which people who show up to vote in a primary election may choose the ballot of either party, even if it is not the party that they generally voted for in the past.
There are two major ways in which ordinary citizens make their voices heard in the selection of presidential candidates, by presidential primary elections or by party caucuses. Caucuses, which are precinct or county meetings of voters in a particular party, are a burden for people with full-time jobs or young children, so often a very small percentage of actual voters show up at caucuses, and the party leaders and elected officials dominate the process. Presidential primaries are simpler and just involve going to the polls and voting.
Years ago my state, Missouri, used party caucuses to select their delegates to the presidential conventions. By using caucuses the party bosses and political leaders kept the power of delegate selection to themselves and essentially froze the common people out of the process. It was the anthesis of democracy - where the people would get to decide.
In 1984 I was responsible for setting up a presidential preference caucus in a rural Missouri county. It took a lot of work to find a good location, advertise, get the rules printed, provide for refreshments, etc, but my team and I managed to pull it off. The caucus was held in the county courthouse, and about forty people showed up - and of those, about a third were actually members of the other political party who had attended just to mess with our results. Forty people from an entire county bothered to attend, and most of them were party committee people, office holders, and saboteurs. The general public essentially had no say in that highly important political matter.
Not long after that, Missouri, is a gush of democracy, switched over to a presidential primary system, one that lasted through 2020. Then, in 2022, our Republican-heavy legislature decided that the state had had enough democracy and switched to a goofball system which let the political parties decide for themselves. how they would select their delegates to the national conventions.
Missouri Republicans, not being big fans of democracy, chose (or their party leaders chose) to use a caucus system and return to the good old days of the party bosses running things. The state Democratic Party went with a primary election system, but since the state is now officially out of the process, the Democrats are funding and conducting the primary on their own. It is far from a perfect system, and in the case of the Republican caucuses, it is far from being a fair system, but it is what it is, and the requirements of the law are being met - so far.
But certain people are worried that there will be some "cheating" occurring by people who cross party lines and participate in the other party's process - like those people who didn't belong at the county caucus that I organized in 1984, but showed up anyway - or the people who chose the other party's ballot in a presidential primaries.
So enter Missouri's illustrious Republican secretary of state, Jay Ashcroft, the man responsible for elections in the "show me" state. Ashcroft is apparently paranoid that the selection processes won't remain pure, and he has released some garbled information which seems to be aimed at getting Missourians to register an affiliation with one party or the other.
The following was taken from an article entitled "GOP to hold caucuses, Dems to vote by ballot" on page A-5 of "The West Plains Daily Quill" on February 14, 2024:
"No longer are voters able to choose a ballot, regardless of party, to weigh in on their nominees of choice; instead, voters must choose a ballot in alignment with their official registration. The three recognized parties in Missouri, according to the office of Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, are the Republican, Democratic, and Libertarian Parties. Voters who do not want to choose a party ballot may request a ballot containing issues, provided the jurisdiction in which they are voting has issues on which to vote, the office adds."
Missouri law does not require voters to register by political party!
When I read that article, I picked up the phone and called the county courthouse. No, the nice lady told me, Missouri does not register voters by party, but I could declare an "affiliation" if I wanted to. She also informed me that when I showed up to vote in our state's August primary election I could choose whichever party ballot I desired. Missouri is still an "open primary" state.
Then I called the newspaper and spoke with the editor, who was also the person who had written the article that had gotten me wound up. Yes, she said, you must register by political party to be involved in the presidential preference selection process, but as we talked she seemed to agree that the process was confused and that she did not understand it herself. Much of it seemed to be based on a press release from Jay Ashcroft. But there was some original reporting in the piece. The editor/reporter had spoken with local organizers of the upcoming county GOP caucus and quoted them as saying that a prospective participant should be a "true and faithful Republican."
That does not sound like a requirement to officially register or "affiliate" to this skeptical old codger - who will participate in one party's selection process without registering an affiliation.
Over the past two years there have been a couple of state legislative attempts to redefine Missouri's voting system to some sort of registration or affiliation by party, but so far those have not been successful.
Missouri had a system that worked, and our legislature broke it. Next Jay Ashcroft tried to define it to suit his, and his party's, agenda, and now we have a fermenting mess.
Perhaps it's time to for Missouri to replace its legislators with chimpanzees who carry laptop computers. They would certainly be less harmful than what we have now - and they might actually accomplish something that would make life better for the citizens of the state.
Missouri does not require voters to register or even affiliate by party regardless of what our Secretary of State would like for us to think.
Jay Ashcroft wants to be our governor.
Have mercy!
End of spiel.
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