RI Republicans Debate Primary Open Only to Registered Members
RI Republicans Debate Primary Open Only to Registered Members
by Richard C. Dujardin
WARWICK –– By a vote of 26 to 10, members of the state Republican Party’s executive committee urged state chairman Giovanni Cicione Tuesday to call a meeting of its state Central Committee on Jan. 19 to take up a request that all future Republican primaries be open only to registered Republicans.
But whether the vote represented any real victory for change proponents is yet to be seen. Cicione, in a telephone interview after the meeting, said that the final decision as to when to have a meeting is his alone and, right now, he is not inclined to call one.
“The fact is that the governor strongly objects to even considering this change, and the majority of elected officials are with the governor on this,” said Cicione. “And so am I.”
Under current state law, Republicans and Democrats are not permitted to vote in the opposing party’s primaries unless they have chosen to disaffiliate at least 90 days prior to the primary. The 48 percent of the electorate who are already listed on the voting rolls as unaffiliated have generally been able to decide on primary day whether to cast ballots in either the Republican or Democratic primary — and to keep that unaffiliated status by signing a document after voting.
The bylaw change proposed by executive committee members such as Raymond McKay would make the process more difficult for unaffiliated voters by requiring that they register as Republicans at least 90 days prior to the primary.
McKay, who was a supporter of former Cranston Mayor Steve Laffey’s primary campaign against then-Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee in 2006, said that the change would prevent the kind of thing he believes occurred then. He said some voters who planned to vote for the Democrat in the general election voted in the Republican primary to support Chafee and knock Laffey out of the race.
According to participants at the meeting Tuesday, a slight majority of executive committee members who are also elected officials opposed the call for a Jan. 19 meeting.
Warwick Mayor Scott Avedisian, who hosted the meeting in his campaign offices, said he would be against a closed primary “because we need to grow the party and attract people with innovative ideas.”
Earlier Tuesday, the office of Secretary of State A. Ralph Mollis sent out an advisory that the state Board of Elections reviews all revisions to party bylaws, so that if the GOP Central Committee does vote to restrict who can vote in its primaries, the “state Board of Elections will be the setting for the next step in the process.”
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