Political parties and the power of friendship

Photo credit: Hannah Busing, on Unplash

Today’s partisan rancor—both between parties and within parties—tempts many into fevered dreams of a utopian, party-less world. But more sober thinking realizes that even if all party lines were erased, it could not be a party-less system, but only a single-party system. That’s no dream. It’s a nightmare.

The right to form political parties is written into the First Amendment. “Congress shall make no law respecting …the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” These words are not merely about picket lines. Taken together, they recognize the right of individuals to amplify their voices by unifying their concerns into a single petition or a single candidate. That’s what political parties do.

To accomplish this, political parties have the right to determine who may join their assembly, and who may not. And governments may not intimidate individuals from joining. Nor may they mandate the inclusion of members that oppose a party’s “beliefs and ideas.” In 1958, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that Alabama could not even require the NAACP to reveal its membership list without violating the First Amendment.

Nevertheless, Wyoming’s state legislature has both taken over the membership lists of our political parties and used its power to influence their internal decisions. These deep encroachments on First Amendment rights were, no doubt, made with good intentions. 

Since the county clerks already had the equipment, the voter registry, and the expertise to run elections, why not piggyback party primaries onto municipal and county elections? This arrangement made sense until government officials began to exert state control over party primaries. 

Governments have the authority to register voters. But they have no inherent right to track party affiliation. It is only by the leave of political parties that the state can do so. Nevertheless, this summer, the Secretary of State usurped control of the party registration lists and directed county clerks to withhold information from elected party officers.

As the Joint Corporations committee discusses LSO-190 Voter registry list at Friday’s meeting, it would do well to keep NAACP v. Alabama in mind. That landmark case requires states to keep their noses out of party membership lists, not to withhold party membership information from the parties themselves.

But it gets worse. In 2021 the Wyoming Republican Party central committee overwhelmingly voted to conduct its primary elections by way of run-off instead of plurality voting. A vote at the statewide convention ought to have been enough to effect this change. Instead, the GOP had to take it to the state legislature, where current House leadership would not even let it be considered. 

2020 Wyoming GOP Convention, Gillette

Now, the Joint Corporations committee has asked for bill draft, LSO-0192 Election revisions, to introduce ranked-choice voting. Runoff elections make certain that a clear majority of the party supports the party’s candidate. This bill strips political parties of their right even to have a party candidate.

The entire point of forming political parties was to use the power of free assembly to petition the government for a single candidate of the party’s choosing to be listed on the November ballot. Ranked-choice voting hijacks this process and bypasses the political parties altogether. It is such a total takeover of party primaries that citizens are stripped of any power to organize in the fielding of candidates.  

Elected legislators—whether Democrat or Republican, Libertarian or Constitutional—who don’t want runoff elections can petition their own party convention for the type of election that suits them. But never should they use state power to override the will of parties. Any reduction of the power of individuals to organize is a power grab by the state.

This is a First-Amendment issue, but it rests on something even deeper. The very reason that the United States Constitution recognizes the right of free assembly and petition is because it recognizes the more fundamental power of friendship. Mobs have awesome power. But friends acting in agreement can even turn aside an angry mob.

The mob has power because it is large, and it is loud. Friends have power because they care about each other and are willing to defer to one another for a greater cause. We should not confuse these powers. 

Both cooperate to get things done. But mobs can be manipulated by heartless crowd psychology, while friends who defer willingly are more stable and less easily manipulated. Mobs use the vote to dominate the loser, while friends use the vote to find the candidate or idea that they want to put forward. It is the willingness to defer—and not the power of the vote—that gives the party power. 

That’s why good legislation will always prefer to give power to parties rather than to mobs.