One of most distinctive characteristics of Montana elections is the so-called open primary in which voters have long had the option of voting in either the Democratic or Republican primary regardless of their own personal allegiance.

But now a lawsuit filed on behalf of the Ravalli County Republican Central Committee may bring that practice to an end. Attorney Matthew Monforton is asking the Helena District Court to declare as unconstitutional Montana’s laws that allow any registered voter to participate in any party primary.

Monforton earlier this year convinced the Republican Party state convention to back the idea, but the party leadership has indicated it does not plan to pursue the matter. Therefore, Monforton and Ravalli County’s Republicans have teamed up in an effort to get the law changed before the 2016 election cycle.

The general logic of their position is pretty much unassailable. It is that Republicans should pick candidates to represent the Republican Party in general elections, and that participation by non-Republicans can only dilute the party’s ability to find candidates who support the party’s platform and principles.

Transfer the logic to any other institution and you can see that it would be disastrous if applied universally. Let’s imagine a Presbyterian church that allowed Catholics, Methodists, Jews and Muslims to vote on what church doctrines to follow. Or let’s consider the possibility of an open vote at stockholders’ meetings: As long as you held stock in any company, you could vote for the board of directors of a rival company. How long do you think it would take before Bill Gates was elected chairman of the board of Apple?

Nonetheless, despite logic, Montanans have zealously defended their open primary for the simple reason that it gives individual voters an extraordinary power. No races of interest being fought in your own party’s primary? Then just ask for the ballot from the opposing party and vote to decide that party’s candidates.

In theory, the system empowers voters to vote in the primary that is of the most interest to them, thus perhaps increasing overall participation in the process.

But in practice, it has encouraged mischief at worst, and homogenization at best, in the serious business of picking candidates to compete for the honor of representing we the people.

Sometimes, voters “cross over” to vote for the person whom they perceive as the worst candidate — the one who is most extreme, most vulnerable, most likely to lose. Thus, they are not voting to improve the process, but to ensure eventual victory in November for their own party’s candidate.

That doesn’t happen often, but even if Republicans decide to vote in the Democratic primary out of the best intentions — because they want the person they consider the best candidate to win — it still dangerously skews the process. The most moderate Democrat may appeal to Republicans, but he or she may be ill-equipped to represent the Democratic Party’s ideals. The most moderate GOP candidate may be less scary to Democrats, but will he or she just be a Republican in name only?

The reason primaries exist at all is because grass-roots voters wanted to take the selection process out of the legendary smoke-filled rooms and make candidates accountable to the people they represent. But the open-primary process went too far. The general election is supposed to offer voters a choice between two or more candidates who stand for something specific — something Republican, something Democratic, or something Libertarian.

By giving us Democratic candidates who are “acceptable to Republicans” and Republican candidates who are “acceptable to Democrats,” we have too often been robbed of a vigorous debate and genuine choice.

What ultimately matters is the choice that all of the voters make in November, and if we are too often disappointed in the quality of the candidates running, we perhaps need look no further than the open-primary process that encouraged those candidates to be all things to all people and to stand for next to nothing.

There’s no guarantee that this lawsuit will prevail, but in the interests of voters who want a real choice in November, it probably should.

Editorials represent the majority opinion of the Daily Inter Lake’s editorial board.