Ivanka Trump, who missed the deadline to change her party affiliation so she could vote in the New York primaries, is now complaining about New York’s “onerous rules” for registration.
The rules are the rules, and it would behoove presidential candidates and their campaigns to read up and avoid embarrassing errors. But New York’s registration requirements really are a national outlier—and that’s much more concerning for the average voter. The Trumps kind of have a point on this one, however conveniently.
New York’s closed-primary system means that only voters affiliated with a political party can cast a ballot in that party’s primary elections—a system embraced by only 11 other states. Among those, New York’s change-of-party deadline is also the earliest in the nation, this time falling in a different calendar year than the actual primary.
It’s easy to see how voters get confused. Those who want to switch party affiliation had to register by Oct. 9, 2015—a full six months before the primary. In contrast, first-time voters could wait until March 25 to register, getting much longer to read up on candidates, watch debates and make up their minds. Likewise, for the party-loyal, March 25 was also the registration deadline.
Many voters find out about the nuances of New York’s wacky electoral law only after it’s too late. In large part because of these tricky rules, New York’s voter turnout is among the lowest in the nation.
Then again, the Empire State’s ridiculous voter-registration requirements are no coincidence. Closed primaries with complex rules are beloved in machine-politics states like New York, ensuring the Party Establishment has an advantage in determining the nominee.
In some ways, the Trumps’ complaints are typical, given how the Donald has marketed himself as anti-establishment. Despite longtime family ties to the New York Democratic Party machine, Trump has managed to convince the electorate he’s an outsider—precisely the type of candidate that has historically despised closed primaries.
But here’s where thing start getting weird, in a quintessentially 2016 way.
As a rule, a closed primary system yields more politically polarized, fringier candidates. Supporters of this system say it prevents opponents from “party-raiding” and influencing the outcome, while critics note that independents and moderates have less opportunity to pull the party centrist.
But many Republicans backing Trump picking him because they feel the Republican Party has grown too moderate and too centrist, controlled by a corrupt Establishment that has abandoned its principles and become essentially indistinguishable from the Democrats. Based on, for example, Trump’s extreme stance on immigration, these voters view Trump as an ultra-right, ultra-conservative candidate.
(The bizarreness of this, given Trump’s longtime political and financial support of the Democratic Party and liberal causes, is a subject for another time.)
When things go wrong, Trump and his supporters have instinctively blamed “the system,” an excuse that his voters, who have long felt angry and politically disenfranchised, eagerly believe. Ivanka Trump’s newfound outspokenness about New York’s onerous voting rules is a case and point.
Here’s the catch: if Trump’s supporters get their way this time, changing New York’s primary rules away from a closed primary with a long lead time, they risk finding themselves disappointed and furious as the system yields even more moderate, more centrist candidates going forward.
— Jillian Kay Melchior writes for Heat Street and is a fellow for the Independent Women’s Forum and the Steamboat Institute.
