Crossover voting did indeed have an impact in the 2022 primary election in Park County. According to Park County Elections, 9.5% of Republicans who voted in the primary had changed their affiliation since the start of the year.

It’s certainly understandable that some within GOP party leadership and Republican voters could see this as an issue, but there’s a problem with the thinking that restricting when a person can change his or her registration will have a big effect: There’s no litmus test one has to take to change their affiliation.

In other words, a Wyoming voter is allowed to be so liberal it’d make a UC-Berkeley professor blush, and still be a registered Republican. No one is proposing some sort of test for voter registration be added — which is as it should be, as a government or party infrastructure should never be able to define a voter based on what he or she believes.

However, as that’s the case, the idea that restricting dates to change affiliation would change much is taking far too dim a view of voters who may want to change. Surely many will simply change registration earlier.

Of course, changing registration next election may not be that big of a deal, as only about 10% of the voters who changed to Republican from Democrat, unaffiliated or something else, changed back in time for the general election.

We may simply be at a point in Wyoming politics where one party is so dominant that the candidate who can win a Republican primary is the same candidate who can win a general election. In other words, the Republican candidates may be a better proximation of the true majority of Wyoming voters, not just a subsection of them.

Is that really such a problem? Wyoming is still a conservative state and even many of our more moderate political leaders are still relatively conservative compared to those across the country. Gov. Mark Gordon is seen as a RINO by some, but during Covid he had schools open more than any other state in the country while still keeping students and teachers safe. And he has consistently directed the state to defend the interests of our energy industry by suing states and the federal government over access to ports and the ability to lease federal lands for drilling. Last I checked, those are quite conservative positions and seen as good for the state by a vast majority of Wyomingites.

And in the end, our elected officials post general election will be the ones chosen by a majority of state voters. So, does it really matter the affiliation of those voters if the result is conservative and practical leadership?