WHO OWNS AMERICA'S PRIMARY ELECTIONS?

• Arizona presidential primary in peril - County officials want parties to handle process (by Michelle Ye Hee Lee, The Arizona Republic) Representatives from the Democratic and Libertarian parties said they would support legislation that would drop the 2012 election. "The idea of people paying for primary elections for parties that they do not agree with substantially is absurd," said Barry Hess, Libertarian Party spokesman.
• Guest opinion: First, look in the mirror (by Greg Cusack, Asheville Citizen Times) Abolish the caucus system, moving either to open primaries or to a ranking primary election in which the two or three candidates garnering the most votes proceed to the general election. Only in this way will we eliminate the steady march to the ideological extremes that characterize our times.
• SCOTUS would be wise to scuttle Arizona Clean Elections law (by Mark B. Evans, Tucson Citizen) The state courts gutted open primaries, which were intended to empower the growing class of centrist voters who are registered independents by allowing them to vote for whomever they wanted in primaries. The political parties sued and now the primaries are only half open, meaning independents can vote but they have to pick a side first. As a result, few independents vote in primaries leaving primary elections in the hands of the most liberal or the most conservative of voters, who are the ones most likely to vote in a primary.