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The GOP Is Asking Tennessee’s Lawmakers to Close The State’s Open Primaries

By: Wes Messamore
The Independent Voter Network


NASHVILLE, Tenn. – The Republican Party of Tennessee has asked state lawmakers to change Tennessee’s open primary to a closed one for the first time by requiring voters to register with one of the two parties in order to vote in either of their primaries.

The State Executive Committee of the Republican Party of Tennessee has taken up the issue of closing the Volunteer State’s open primaries since as far back as 2010, but overturning this longstanding aspect of Tennessee politics has never found support with a majority of the state GOP’s members until now.

On Saturday the Tennessee Republican Party State Executive Committee passed a resolution to request that the Tennessee General Assembly (which is controlled by the Republican Party) pass an election reform law that would prohibit “cross over” voting.

This would be the end of open primaries in Tennessee.

But the TN Republican Party’s attempted clampdown on voter freedom doesn’t end there.

The same day the Tennessee Republican Party passed a resolution to push independent voters out of the state’s partisan primaries, it adopted a second resolution to make it harder for those voters to get a candidate of their own on the ballot:

Read more at The Independent Voter Network.

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