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No time to waste! Register Republican today to help decide Rep. Chris Stewart’s replacement, Robert Gehrke writes.

In a system rigged by GOP lawmakers, the Sept. 5 Republican primary special election matters most, so Gehrke says it’s important to register as a “party raider.”

(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Robert Gehrke.

Editor’s note • Utah voters, according to the current bill language, will have until the governor signs the special election legislation to change their party affiliation. That could be as soon as Wednesday evening.

Sorry to do this right before the weekend, but I have an important homework assignment for you. And it’s kind of urgent.

As we learned this week, the special election to replace outgoing Rep. Chris Stewart will be held Nov. 21, pushing the normal general election back two weeks.

But we also learned this week — from a brief filed in the lawsuit over Utah’s gerrymandered congressional districts — that Stewart and his colleagues in the delegation don’t believe voters have a right to fair elections and a meaningful role in their outcome.

The way Utah’s maps were drawn, Stewart’s 2nd Congressional District currently holds a 23-point to 26-point Republican advantage. It’s not the most Republican district in the state, but still a big edge.

That means that chances are very, very good that the Republican who wins the primary in September will go on to be the next congressman or congresswoman from Utah.

And this field is looking like it will run the gamut from moderate Republicans like Becky Edwards to far-right, Trumpy candidates like former House Speaker Greg Hughes and state Sen. Mike Kennedy.

With perhaps as many as five or six candidates making it to the September primary ballot, a couple thousand votes — heck a few hundred votes — could make the difference between getting a reasonable moderate in Washington or someone from the fringe of the party.

So here’s your assignment: If you are registered as a Democrat or are an unaffiliated independent voter in the 2nd Congressional District, or you aren’t registered to vote and you want to have even the smallest say in who is representing you in Congress, go to vote.utah.gov and register as a member of the Republican Party.

And it’s important that you do it soon — preferably today — because there’s no way to know how long you’ll have to register.

Last year, the Legislature, upset with so-called “party raiding,” put a deadline on when voters can register or change parties and still vote in the primary election. But they only set the deadline for even-year elections, since usually the only odd-year elections we have are non-partisan municipal races.

But don’t count on the law staying that way for long. When Gov. Spencer Cox issued the call for next Wednesday’s special legislative session, one of the items put on the agenda was “to establish the deadline by which a voter may change the voter’s political party affiliation for the Sep. 5″ primary election.

We don’t know yet what the deadline will be. In the even-year elections, the deadline is now April 1 for the primaries that are held in late June. So lawmakers will likely set it for as soon as they can.

The point being that there isn’t much time to waste, and it’s better to just get it done now before the Legislature closes the window.

Establishment Republicans will undoubtedly gripe about this tactic — “Why don’t you focus on making your own party better instead of playing games with ours?” And if the playing field was level and the districts were fair, they might have a point.

But we know that they aren’t, so we have to play the only hand we’ve been dealt.

And hopefully, we can tip the scales just a little away from the toxicity and radical far-right ideologues the party has forced on us in the past, and maybe send a reasonable and moderate to Washington who will truly represent the mainstream of the 2nd Congressional District for a change.