open primaries

Chenele Dixon provides a concrete case for the new alignment audit because policy divergence, party criticism, and election-reform advocacy are all documented independently. The Idaho Republican State Central Committee's 2023 Resolution 2023-43 named Dixon in a vote of no confidence over her vote against overriding Gov. Brad Little's veto of HB 314 and said the named lawmakers had voted in conflict with the Republican platform. Dixon's 2024 campaign/public profile also stated that she opposed efforts to direct government dollars to private schools, while the 2024 Idaho GOP platform explicitly said education money should follow students to parents' school of choice and supported private/parochial schools and education-savings-account-style funding. In a 2024 College of Southern Idaho candidate-forum response, Dixon criticized Idaho's abortion law for lacking broader health exceptions and said that while she could live with a ban on elective abortion, health exceptions were needed; the contemporaneous 2024 GOP platform said all children should be protected regardless of circumstances of conception and supported criminalization of abortion. Separately, Unite America published a Nov. 4, 2025 profile of Dixon describing her as a 'pragmatic Republican' and quoting her critique of Idaho's closed Republican primary. The profile states that she supports open primaries in which every voter can participate regardless of party and supports instant-runoff elections, and says Idaho Solutions supports legislators focused on governing for all constituents rather than only the voters who decide primaries. Unite America's own press materials define partisan primaries as its central 'Primary Problem.' Common Ground — United We Stand, co-founded by Dixon and , has also submitted official Oregon testimony supporting unified/open-primary reform and argues that closed primaries produce party-purity-test candidates. This creates a documented alignment in election-system objectives between Dixon/Common Ground and , a major national election-reform funder already documented in Idaho. However, no direct grant/payment to Dixon, , or Common Ground has been established in the current research, and ideological/policy alignment alone is not evidence of control or bad faith. This case should now be tested for funding, coalition coordination, and whether /Common Ground's candidate-support activities map onto the same Republican-primary candidate network funded by Way Back/Defend and Protect.