I live in a red state with a small population (Utah). People here don’t even register as republicans because 75% of the state is republican. If we had an open Democratic primary, these “independent" conservatives could and would vote for whoever they think would do the worst for the democrats as a general election candidate. The Republicans would get to try and choose their opponent in order to tank the democratic party. This is why the Democratic parties in many states hold closed primaries. Sorry your guy didn’t win but so you know some of those Sanders votes in the open primaries were just that, a bad faith attempt to hurt the democratic party by people who would like nothing more than to see a democrat lose in November. You should need to be a democrat to take part in selecting the Democratic nominee. A lot of these people don’t know shit about politics, and don’t care to be a part of it until something hip comes along… these people are free to form political parties, join them, and vote for whoever they want in November, but it would be stupid to let them hijack the party by sheer numbers. What of Trump choose to run as a democrat and had all of his supporters vote him in an open democratic primary… in a red state with more conservatives than liberals, he would get the Democratic nomination by getting independent and republican votes