At its best, the issue is thick-headed, and if it is implemented, it will be disastrous.

That is not stopping the Hawaii Democratic Party from calling in an airstrike on its own position.

On Monday, Democrats filed a federal lawsuit saying Hawaii’s open primary system violated the constitutional right of free associ- ation and should be stopped.

Within minutes of party Chairman Dante Carpenter announcing the suit, Democratic leaders across the state, ranging from the governor to the House Democratic leader, questioned the idea and said they like the primary elections as they are.

Nothing pleases Democrats more than when they are fighting with other Democrats.

The issue is about this sentence in Article II, Section 4 in the state Constitution:

"Secrecy of voting shall be preserved; provided that no person shall be required to declare a party preference or nonpartisanship as a condition of voting in any primary or special primary election."

That was included in a surprising turn in 1978 by the state’s last Constitutional Convention.

Originally the ConCon was moving to uphold the existing practice of allowing the Legislature to declare primary elections either open or closed.

Time out: What are open and closed primaries?

In a closed primary, voters have to say if they are a Republican, Democrat or whatever. Anyone can find out your party because your name will be on a public list.

Open primaries mean while you pick only one party to vote for, you decide in the privacy of the voting both which one you will pick.

"We want to be able to select our candidates by and among people that actually want to engage with the Democratic Party in a serious conversation about what the world needs and how we fit in," said Tony Gill, the Democrats’ attorney and the former Oahu Democratic Party chairman.

Gill and other Democrats have long pushed to close the primary, but the late U.S. Sen. Daniel K. Inouye counseled that closing the primary would needlessly reduce the number of people voting Democratic — and what sense does that make?

We have been opening and closing our primary elections since before statehood when primary elections were open. When the Democrats really started running things in 1963, they closed the primaries — so if you voted, everyone knew if you were a D or an R.

At ConCon, the vote was a surprise, because the committee in charge of elections voted not to change the closed primary system, but then the entire body, the Committee of the Whole, voted 51 to 48 to change it.

Voting for the old closed system were delegates Joe Souki, now speaker of the House; Les Ihara, now a Democratic state senator; Carol Fukunaga, now a member of the City Council, and John Waihee, who became lieutenant governor then governor.

Back then, the debate went all night.

"Many voters are turned off; they resent having their privacy invaded when they are required to declare their party affiliation. They stay away from the polls," delegate Rachael Lee, a Democrat, said 35 years ago.

Waihee argued that "the primary should be the time when party candidates are selected, and that is what I believe the American system of government is based on."

"If the primary is simply a nominating process for a political party, it’s always disturbed me — what right any party has to demand that the state print up the ballots," said delegate Paul DiBianco, a Honolulu attorney who has since died.

If the state is going to run primary elections at the cost of millions of dollars, DiBianco reasoned, then all the voters of the state should have the right to choose those members of those parties to run in the general election.

It is up to the voters, DiBianco said, not the parties to decide when they go into the voting booth whether they will vote Democrat or Republican or whatever party they choose.

It is that simple understanding of freedom and democracy that the Democratic Party today does not understand.

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Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Reach him at rborreca@staradvertiser.com.