Andrew Schneider/Houston Public Media
The Republican Party of Texas — joined by Chip Hunt, a party precinct chair in Potter County — is suing Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson to force the state to close its open primary election system.
The effort is raising concerns among disability advocates, who worry the move to require Texans to register their political affiliation could disenfranchise older voters.
The state Republican Party adopted a rule in 2024 that only registered Republicans can vote in its primary elections. But Texas law requires county-level elections officials to conduct open primaries.
“This was not done lightly or without cause,” the plaintiffs wrote in their initial complaint. “It was rooted in the Party’s experience with ‘crossover voting’ – independents and Democrats strategically voting in Republican primaries to force the nomination of moderate candidates who they prefer or the nomination of weak candidates they believe will lose the general election.”
The Republican Party rule runs counter to state law, which allows Texans to declare their party affiliation on primary election day. Voters are then limited to their first-round party choice for purposes of voting in runoff elections.
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Texas is one of 14 states that has open primaries.
“This system presents an ongoing violation of the Party’s First Amendment freedom of association, and this Court should declare that system unconstitutional as applied to the Party,” the plaintiffs said.
The plaintiffs argued the court should allow the Party to transition to a closed Republican primary in advance of future election cycles, whether or not the state Legislature chose to close the state’s open primary system for all Texans.
“There were bills filed in the last Legislature on this issue. None of them moved forward. And I think that’s a pretty clear sign that the party itself that’s in control did not move these through the process,” said Chase Bearden, executive director of the Coalition of Texans with Disabilities, which filed a friend of the court brief on Nelson’s behalf.
Bearden expressed concerns that closing the state’s primary system would broadly discourage political participation, particularly among older and disabled voters.
“And when you look at the way voting goes, there’s already barriers to voting, I think, for many people with disabilities, and that could be physical barriers, transportation and access barriers,” Bearden said. “When you go to make major changes in a primary like this, where it would force all of our registered voters in Texas to have to re-register, that would create a huge barrier, not just for the disability community, but I think across the board.”
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office has taken the unusual step of weighing in on the side of the plaintiffs against his fellow Republican elected office holder, albeit on behalf of the State of Texas.
“Plaintiffs and Defendant the State of Texas agree that participation in the Republican primary should be limited to persons who have previously taken steps to affiliate with the Republican Party, as reflected by the Republican Party of Texas’s rules as set forth in the complaint,” Paxton’s office wrote in a joint motion with the plaintiffs asking for summary judgment.
Houston Public Media reached out to Nelson, but her office declined to comment for this story. It referred instead to Nelson’s legal response – a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, on the grounds that the plaintiffs lacked legal standing to sue the state and that they had failed to plausibly allege a freedom-of-association claim under the First Amendment.
In her only public statement on the lawsuit, Nelson said she had never expressed opposition to closed primaries and would implement any changes enacted by the Legislature in the future.
“But the existing statutes were duly enacted by our Legislature,” Nelson said. “I put my hand on Sam Houston’s Bible and sworn an oath to uphold the laws and Constitution of this state, and I am bound to do that.”
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