Dave just won a First Amendment case invalidating part of the Arizona Constitution.  Good deal! You want my opinion, the whole primary system stinks. I don’t think political parties should be able to hijack the voting apparatus of the state for selecting candidates, or the other way around. That’s just bad public policy.
But I think open primaries tread on the First Amendment’s freedoms of association. If you’re going to let the state hijack the selection of candidates for parties, you should have to choose a party association.
Personally, I think all the states should do it the Iowa way, with caucuses. All that stuff should happen outside the structure of the state. There are ways you can structure ballot rules to be fair to the major parties, and to third parties, without letting every yahoo group onto the ballot.
Hmm, maybe election ballots should be done away with altogether. Instead, voters will write down the name of their desired candidate manually.
If a person can’t be bothered to remember a person’s name, they really shouldn’t be voting.
Is this a bad idea? Probably.