This graphic is scary, and yet I can't stop using it.
How very Soviet!
The [Virginia] Republican Party will require voters to sign a loyalty oath in order to participate in the March 6 presidential primary.
Anyone who wants to vote must sign a form at the polling place pledging to support the eventual Republican nominee for president. Anyone who refuses to sign the pledge will be barred from voting. [...]
Signs for polling places and the pledge form will advise voters that “Section 24.2-545 of the Code of Virginia allows the political party holding a primary to determine requirements for voting in the primary, including ‘the signing of a pledge by the voter of his intention to support the party’s candidate when offering to vote in the primary.’ ”
The pledge will require the voter to sign and to print his name beneath a line that says: “I, the undersigned, pledge that I intend to support the nominee of the Republican Party for president.”
I could try to be outraged by this Soviet Muppet Babies version of democracy, but I can't. It's too silly and pathetic—although I am impressed with just how often Republicans require "loyalty oaths" from their voters or even just from people wanting to hear them speak.
Virginia has open primaries, which makes this relevant. You don't have to be in a given party to vote in their primary (though of course you can only vote in one party's primary, not both of them). This appears to be an attempt to skirt the state's open primary law, supported by the State Board of Elections itself, in order to filter out non-party-members from causing crazy mischief by ... well, by what? There's only two candidates on the ballot, Mitt Romney and Ron Paul. Are they worried independents will tip things towards Ron Paul? Are they worried Newt Gingrich, who has freely admitted to the same exact kind of OMG Pearl Harbor vote tampering (i.e. a guy turning in bad signatures) that did in ACORN?
But that's not what their loyalty oath is focused on. It requires you pledge that you "intend to support the nominee of the Republican Party for president." What if you only find one of the candidates acceptable, and but not the other? Are you prevented from voting, then, because you are not willing to pledge fealty to a generic, unknown future candidate? Because that's exactly what it says.
In reality, the loyalty oath is garbage. Since it is barring thoughtcrime, there is no way to enforce it, and you are perfectly free to walk into the polls, lie your ass off, and vote for whomever you damn well want. If the loyalty oath has any effect at all, it will be on people who are too honest or principled to lie on a pointless, makework form, and thus refuse. Those honest and principled voters will then be prevented from voting for Republicans.
This makes perfect sense, of course: The Republican Party goes to great lengths to purge honest or principled people from the party. Perhaps it will become a point of pride among voters to be told "I'm sorry, but you are too honest for us to allow you to vote for a Republican."