Jeremy Alford and David Jacobs: 'No party' voters add wrinkle to new party primaries

By JEREMY ALFORD and DAVID JACOBS
The number of voters nationwide who don’t want to join either major party is growing, and Louisiana is no exception to the trend. 
Such voters will still be able to vote in next year’s newly established party primaries, and how they influence those elections will be one of the more interesting political stories to follow next year.
In the meantime, local election officials are adjusting to a world where party registration matters more than it used to in the Bayou State. 
At times in recent years, “other” has been the fastest-growing category of voters in Louisiana, though the overall trendline favors the GOP. The Republican ranks have grown by 8% since August 2020, while Democrats lost more than 12% and the number of other voters increased by 5.6%. 
Republicans are on pace to exceed the Democrats’ registration total, but they aren’t quite there yet. Louisiana is home to about 1.09 million Democrats, though many are older voters who mostly vote Republican these days, while the GOP has a little less than 1.05 million. 
Louisiana also boasts more than 800,000 “no party” voters. That total just jumped by about 150,000, as lawmakers dissolved the Independent Party and shifted its members to the ranks of the unaffiliated. 
Overall, voters who do not identify with one of the major parties show up to the polls less frequently. In November, turnout was about 78% for Republicans, 64% for Democrats and 55% for everyone else, according to the Secretary of State’s office. 
However, Independents (with a capital “I”) have turned out at a higher rate than unaffiliated voters, pollster John Couvillon said. That higher level of engagement could make them an important voting block within the “no party” population; remember, unaffiliated voters will be able to vote in Democrat or Republican primaries, though not both. 
“You’re talking about the very real potential to dilute the Republican Party primary electorate a little bit,” Couvillon said.
Still, such voters in Louisiana outside of Orleans Parish mostly lean to the right, he added. And the Republican primaries for Congress in the spring, which will feature U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy’s high-profile and hotly contested reelection bid, will be the hottest ticket. 
“I would fully expect two-thirds to three-fourths of these unaffiliated-slash-independent voters picking a Republican primary ballot as opposed to a Democratic primary ballot,” Couvillon said.
Bill Bryan, the Independent Party’s former executive director and a founding member, agrees that members are politically engaged, though he said most lean to the left. While he doesn’t expect many are interested in joining another party, he thinks many will participate in party primaries.
“I would think that this would be a group of voters that [candidates] could specifically target and try to attract, and I think that they would be amenable to listening,” he said. 
The shift to party primaries is likely to nudge many of those long term nominal Democrats to finally change their registrations, though so far officials are not getting a flood of inquiries about changing parties. Steve Rayborn, registrar in East Baton Rouge Parish and president of the Louisiana Registrars of Voters Association, predicted an increase in registration switching as more voters learn about the new system, noting that Secretary of State Nancy Landry is rolling out a public education program. 
Louisiana already uses party primaries for the presidential preference primaries, and there are always people who show up and realize they can’t vote in the primary that they expected to vote in, Rayborn said. 
“I think there will be people that will be surprised when they get to the polls in April that they can’t vote for the party they want to,” he said. 
Brian Champagne, registrar in St. Bernard Parish and secretary-treasurer with the state association, predicts the public won’t really start paying attention until next year, as campaigns begin to heat up. The party choices people make from that point likely will be driven by the candidates they want to support, he said. 
“Why change party right now?” he said. “You’re not going to know who’s on the ballot, and you’ve got plenty of time to make a decision.” 
Lafayette Parish Clerk of Court Louis Perret said he’s been “in a full-blown sprint” preparing for the new system. 
“I hope and pray that I’m wrong, but I expect a disaster with the closed primaries,” he said.  
His parish has more unaffiliated voters than Democrats, Perret said. When one of those no party voters shows up to a party primary, they’ll be asked to step aside and fill out the necessary paperwork to declare which party they’re choosing before getting a ballot, which will create delays.
Also, Perret said he is certain people will be upset when they try to vote for a Republican but the machine won’t tally their vote because they are registered as a Democrat, or vice versa. 
“I absolutely, positively guarantee you that people will be screaming corruption,” he said. 
Louisiana adopted party primaries for congressional races only in 2008 and 2010, but lawmakers abandoned them, at least in part because of voter confusion. The new system applies to Congress, the Public Service Commission, the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education and the Louisiana Supreme Court. Other offices still will use the open, nonpartisan primary. 
Brent Littlefield, a longtime political advisor to Gov. Jeff Landry who helped craft the governor’s proposal to move to closed primaries, noted that Louisiana has consistently used them in presidential elections. 
“Officials are always fearful of election changes if they personally were not elected under the new system,” he said. “If a closed primary system was that disastrous, all the states around the nation that mainly use closed primaries would not be using them.”
Vernon Parish Clerk of Court Jeff Skidmore, who is president of the state Clerks of Court Association, said some confusion in the precincts may be inevitable, but clerks are working hard to mitigate any issues. As Secretary of State Landry works from now until April to help voters understand the new system, Skidmore and his colleagues plan to help spread the word in their areas, he said. 
The clerks also will have to prepare their election commissioners who are on the front lines. 
“Commissioners are hard to come by these days,” Skidmore said “They’re older citizens. They don’t like change very much.” 
But Skidmore also stressed that election officials have been given their marching orders by the Legislature, and now it’s time to carry them out. 
“There’s no such thing as the perfect election,” he added. “You can only hope to have really, really good ones. And we have really, really good ones.”
For more Louisiana political news, visit www. LaPolitics.com or follow Alford on X @ LaPoliticsNow.