Direct primaries, like open marketplaces, depend on the names inscribed in the register.
Imagine the Electoral Act as a carefully tended garden: Section 77 plants the solemn bedrock of membership rolls, insisting that parties keep a living, digital-heralded catalogue of their adherents and lay it before the Commission twenty-one days before the rites of nomination. Section 84(2) then offers two paths through the garden to the flower of candidacy: the open-air democracy of direct primaries or the cultivated intimacy of consensus. Yet a troubling breeze stirs the hedges; can a disappointed aspirant, having tasted defeat in one enclosure, slip through a gap and bloom under another party’s banner? A strict reading of the text seems to forbid it; a closer, more literally inclined reading reveals a seam of ambiguity.
Section 77 is emphatic in form: the register is to be maintained, photographs and national identification included, membership cards issued, and, crucially, the register delivered to the Commission no later than twenty-one days before primaries, congresses or conventions. The statute repeats itself with an almost liturgical insistence: only those whose names grace that register may vote and be voted for in party primaries; no other ledger may be consulted; and defaulting parties that fail to submit are barred from fielding candidates. On the surface, these provisions appear to slam the door shut on post-primary defections. After all, if Party A submits its roll and an aspirant contests and loses elsewhere, how could that aspirant plausibly feature in Party B’s register already lodged with the Commission?
