Legislation creating semi-open primaries in Maine went into effect Sunday, expanding the list of states that allow unaffiliated voters to participate in nominating contests.
The bill, which was approved by both chambers of the Legislature and allowed to become law by Democratic Gov. Janet Mills without her signature, allows people who are not registered with either party to participate in primary voting beginning in 2024.
As of July 2021, 36 percent of Maine registered voters are independent. Until this bill goes into effect in two years, the current, closed system remains in effect, meaning only voters registered with a party may vote in the primary.
The new system is considered “semi-open” because registered Democrats and Republicans will not be able to vote in the other party’s primaries.
“We are grateful that L.D. 231 has become law, enfranchising hundreds of thousands of independent voters,” said Kaitlin LaCasse, campaign manager for Open Primaries Maine. “The significant bipartisan support for semi-open primaries here in Maine is particularly notable during this time in which many states are considering the rollback of voter rights. It is a good day for democracy!”
Maine will continue to use ranked-choice voting in both its primary and general elections.
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, nine states continue to use closed primaries, in which only voters who belong to a party may participate in that party’s nominating process.
The vast majority of states use some form of open primaries for congressional, state and local elections.
There are various forms of open primaries. Some states have systems like Maine’s, where independents can choose in which primary to vote. In a fully open primary, states do not require partisan registration and all voters can vote in the primary of their choice.
Some states go even further. California, Washington and (to an extent) Nebraska, run all candidates in one primary with the top two vote getters advancing to the general election. Alaska does the same but advances the top four finishers. And Louisiana doesn't have a primary. Instead, all candidates run in the general election and if no one gets a majority, the top two face each other in a runoff.
“Independent voters are now the largest group of voters in the country. Letting all voters vote may sound simple, but it’s a profound component of what it will take to improve democracy in Maine and around our great nation,” said Open Primaries Senior Vice President Jeremy Gruber.
image of U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed on a digital billboard in Times Square in New York on April 8, 2026.
Trump is stuck between two realities. Neither serves the American people
Normally, I worry that events may overtake a column. But not so with the Iran war.
I don’t worry about running afoul of a headline or Truth Social post from the president because what is said about the situation is no longer very relevant to the reality.
On April 8, Nick Catoggio, my Dispatch colleague, dubbed an earlier stoppage with Iran “Schrödinger’s ceasefire.” This was a reference to the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who was trying to explain the weirdness of “superpositionality” in quantum physics. A cat in a box is both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box. Schrödinger meant to illustrate the absurdity of the idea that particles aren’t any one thing, but a “cloud of probabilities.”
The Trump administration is stuck in a word cloud of probabilities of his own making. The war is over. The war is on. The war isn’t a war. We have a deal, but we don’t have a deal, but we’re about to have a deal. We destroyed Iran’s military. No, we left it intact. We want regime change. No we don’t. We already accomplished it. We “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year ago. We had to go to war in February to prevent nuclear war. The Strait of Hormuz is open, closed, or something in-between. No deal without “unconditional surrender.” Let’s make a deal!
This everything-all-at-once vibe can be disorienting, particularly since most Americans didn’t have a war with Iran on their bingo cards until the shooting had already started. President Trump didn’t prepare the country or consult with Congress beforehand because he thought it would all be a smashing success in a matter of weeks.
The miscalculation that started it all: killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of Iran’s senior leadership, on the first day of the war. To “the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump announced on Feb. 28. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
I support regime change in Iran and shed no tears for Khamenei or his goons. But when you start a war by killing the regime’s top leaders, it’s not unreasonable for the remaining ones to conclude that you really intend regime change.
Khamenei was a murderous fanatic, but he was a fairly cautious one. He liked to threaten closing the Strait of Hormuz or attacking our regional allies, but he was reluctant to actually do it, fearing it would invite a regime change war. The mullahs and IRGC goons believed, not unreasonably, that if they lost their grip on power, they’d be lynched by the Iranian people they’ve brutalized for decades.
By starting with a regime change war, Trump removed any reason for the regime not to go for broke. When you have nothing to lose — particularly when you are a millenarian religious fanatic — a Persian Alamo strategy makes a lot of sense.
So Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and attacked its neighbors.
But it turns out this wasn’t the Alamo. In the contest of wills, Trump blinked. The Iranian regime’s tolerance for punishment proved — so far — to be greater than Trump’s and that of our gulf allies. Militarily we could finish the job, but that would require ground troops and much greater economic turmoil. In a conflict Trump launched unilaterally without the prior support of Congress, NATO or the American people, Trump doesn’t have the political capital for that.
But that’s only half the problem. Trump wants the war over, but he doesn’t want to pay — militarily, economically, politically — what that would cost. So he wants to make a deal that ends it. But there is no deal available that wouldn’t come at an equally undesirable cost. Any deal that looks like what President Obama struck with the Iranians would be too embarrassing to bear. But the Iranians are convinced that they can get just such a deal, and they’re willing to drag things out as long as it takes.
The result: Trump’s in a box of his own making. He thinks he can talk his way out by simply asserting a reality that doesn’t exist. When the financial markets get nervous, he announces a breakthrough that is, at best, a possibility. When the Iranians agree to a deal that looks similar to one Obama might negotiate, Trump goes back to his threats.
It can’t go on forever. But I’m sure it’ll last until long after this column is forgotten.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.