The Pro Football Hall of Fame’s recent snub of Patriots owner Robert Kraft and former coach Bill Belichick unleashed howls of outrage across New England. When the Globe’s Dan Shaughnessy described the Hall’s rebuff of Belichick as a “ridiculous … petty, embarrassing, unprecedented, stupid, and preposterous” farce, he unquestionably spoke for scores of thousands of football fans. Ditto his colleague Ben Volin, the Globe’s senior NFL writer, to whom the rejection of Belichick was proof that the Hall of Fame needs to “blow up” its voting process and “start from scratch.”

Yet amid all the indignation, no one suggested that the government ought to step in, take over that voting process, and make taxpayers underwrite the cost of running it. After all, the Pro Football Hall of Fame is a private organization. It sets its own rules. It decides who gets to vote. It determines the threshold for election. And it pays the bills.

Political parties are private organizations too. Like the Pro Football Hall of Fame, the Democratic and Republican national committees are not government agencies or public entities. They are corporations created to influence politics and public policy, and they have the same First Amendment rights to define their membership, control their nomination process, and even change their rules as any other private association. Yet unlike sports halls of fame, when America’s political parties choose nominees, they don’t pay for their own balloting. Taxpayers do.

Which is why a recent press release from the advocacy group Open Primaries caught my eye. On March 3, voters in Arkansas, North Carolina, and Texas will cast ballots in the first state primary elections of 2026. As always, those elections will be run by government officials and paid for with public funds.

Open Primaries argues that this arrangement is unjust. Citing a new Gallup survey showing that 45 percent of Americans now identify as independents — a new high — the group insists that millions of voters are reduced to second-class citizens when they are barred from participating in party primaries. If taxpayers foot the bill, the argument goes, every taxpayer should be allowed to vote.

On its face, the complaint isn’t without merit. In roughly half the states, voters must be registered members of a party — or at least not registered with another one — to cast a ballot in that party’s nominating contest. In a country where self-identified independents now outnumber both Democrats and Republicans, that strikes many people as perverse. (Like most Massachusetts voters, I am registered “Unenrolled,” meaning I belong to no party and may choose either a Republican or a Democratic primary ballot.)

But Open Primaries is solving the wrong problem. The real question isn’t whether publicly financed primaries should be opened to everyone. It’s why they are publicly financed at all.

There are sound reasons for closed primaries. Political parties exist to advance particular principles and policy agendas; it isn’t irrational for them to insist that their nominees be chosen by voters who actually identify with those principles. Plus, as I can confirm from personal experience, allowing non-members to have a say in a party’s primary invites strategic “sabotage” voting. In any event, joining a party is hardly an onerous requirement; if you want a say in choosing its standard-bearer, you can sign up.

Underlying those arguments is that a political party is a private association, and associations get to decide for themselves who takes part in their internal decisions.

But wait, some will object: Primaries have become central to American self-government. In many election cycles, the primary effectively decides who will hold office. If that’s so, why shouldn’t they be open to every citizen?

Answer: Because they aren’t elections to office. They are elections to be a party’s nominee. No primary puts anyone in power. The winners must still face the voters in November. Party nominations may be consequential, but they remain internal decisions by private associations — no different, in that sense, than the balloting to name Pulitzer Prize winners or the election of board members at Amazon’s annual shareholders meeting.

For most of American history, parties didn’t use primaries at all. They relied on conventions, caucuses, and negotiations among party leaders. Those methods may offend modern sensibilities, but they underscore an important point: There is nothing constitutionally sacred about the primary system. It is a tool parties adopted for their own purposes.

If a party chooses to pick its candidates via statewide ballot, that’s its prerogative. But it should run those ballots the way other private organizations run theirs — on their own dime. The Pro Football Hall of Fame didn’t ask taxpayers to cover the cost of snubbing Belichick. The Democratic and Republican parties shouldn’t ask them to cover the cost of choosing nominees, either.