Idaho Secretary of State candidate Lawerence Denney wants to do away with the state’s primary election. Denney made the proposal at a City Club of Boise today against his Democratic opponent, Holli Woodings, who sharply disagreed with it; she said Denney wants to “put additional barriers between people and the ballot.”

“There’s a kind of misnomer that the primary is an election. It’s not an election,” said Denney, a nine-term state lawmaker and former speaker of the Idaho House. “It’s a nomination process. It should not be, in my opinion, it should not be run by the state government but by the parties themselves, because we are selecting our candidates.”

More than half of Idaho’s voters are not affiliated with any party; the state never had party registration until 2011, when the state Republican Party closed its primary election to anyone other than registered Republicans and sued the state to force a change in its election laws. Denney was a strong supporter of the move, which he said he stands by today. You can read my full story here at spokesman.com.