We breakdown the history, the issues, and the solutions.
I’m Isaac Saul, and this is Tangle: an independent, nonpartisan, subscriber-supported politics newsletter that summarizes the best arguments from across the political spectrum on the news of the day — then “my take.”
Setting the table.
It’s no exaggeration to say the last few weeks of American politics have been unlike anything we’ve ever seen.
No incumbent president running for re-election has ever dropped out of a race this late in the game, and the way Vice President Kamala Harris replaced President Joe Biden — through backchannel lobbying and a virtual roll-call vote, buttressed by the support of Democratic voters — was entirely novel. It also shined a light on precisely how primary elections for both presidents and members of Congress work. Or, at least, how they’re supposed to.
Right now, our presidential system works like this: States typically hold primary elections or caucuses roughly six to nine months before the election. In primaries, voters (that's you) will show up to the polls and cast a ballot for the candidates of their choosing. In caucuses, meetings are run by political parties where candidates are chosen through secret ballots or by participants physically grouping themselves according to the candidate they support. Depending on what state you live in and what party you are registered with, you might participate in an open primary, a closed primary, a variation on one of the two, or a caucus.
In congressional elections, once a primary or caucus is held, the results are tallied and the winners advance to the general election. However, the process for presidential elections is a little different: Voters cast their ballots in a primary, the results are tallied, and then delegates (typically active members chosen by the party) are awarded to each candidate based on a complex set of rules that differ state by state.
In most cases, the people chosen to be delegates go to national party conventions to award their ballots to a candidate. There are two different kinds of delegates: pledged or bound delegates must support the candidate that won in the primary or caucus process, and unpledged and superdelegates can choose any candidate they want. In order to win a party nomination, candidates have to win a majority of all the delegates.
This system is what allowed Harris to capture the nomination after Biden dropped out, despite the fact that she did not win a single pledged delegate during the primary.
At both the congressional and presidential levels, though, there is a lot of angst about the way our electoral systems work. Today, we are going to explore these current systems, what critics of them say, the pros and cons of alternative systems, and our take on the best way forward.
The U.S. primary system
Whereas general elections are relatively straightforward, primary elections can be complicated, vary in form, and differ from state to state. Broadly, primaries are used to select which candidates will represent a political party in a general election. Accordingly, the term “primary election” is a bit of a misnomer, because the winner of a primary isn’t actually elected to any position; instead, they simply secure their party’s nomination.
In presidential elections, the two major parties — Republicans and Democrats — have their own rules governing how many delegates a candidate needs to win to become the nominee, but both assign delegates based on the results of primaries held in each state. Smaller parties, like the Libertarian Party and the Green Party, have their own nominating rules.
Primaries are administered by state and local election offices on behalf of the political parties, and state law determines the type of primary that’s used. Here are the different primary formats for state-level races, along with the number of states that use them:
- Closed: A voter must register with one of the parties to participate in that party’s primary, and they may only vote for members of that party. Seven states have closed primaries.
- Semi-closed or open to unaffiliated voters: A voter who is registered with either party can only cast their vote in that party’s primary, but those without a party affiliation can pick which party’s primary they want to cast their ballot in (typically by declaring their party preference at the polls). 16 states have semi-closed primaries.
- Partially open: Any voter is allowed to cast their ballot in the primary of their choosing regardless of party affiliation, but if they choose to participate in the primary of the party they are not registered in, their registration may be automatically switched to that party. Six states have partially open primaries.
- Open: A voter with any political affiliation (or no affiliation) is eligible to cast their ballot for any party, but they may only participate in one party’s primary. Twenty states have open primaries.
- Top-two: Voters participate in a single primary election in which all candidates (regardless of party) are on the ballot. The top two vote-getters move on to the general election, even if they are from the same party. Two states (California and Washington) have a top-two system. Additionally, Louisiana, Nebraska, and Alaska have primaries modeled after the top-two system.
For presidential elections, some states choose to make small changes to their primary process; in other cases, they are forced to. In California, for example, the top-two system used for state races is incompatible with the nature of a presidential primary, so the state has adopted a partially closed system for presidential contests. Overall, the primary systems used for state and presidential elections match in 39 states and differ in 11. Among those that differ, seven have laws that are more restrictive for the presidential primary than the state primary. Additionally, five states use caucus systems instead of presidential primaries, though caucuses still fall into the same categories (open, closed, etc.).
The history of political parties.
A dual-party system has persisted throughout much of U.S. history, but the two leading parties have not always been Republicans and Democrats. Many of the founding fathers — like George Washington and Alexander Hamilton — vehemently opposed the idea of political parties, fearing they would undermine the principles of American democracy and destabilize the government. But the U.S.’s winner-takes-all, single-member district system for electing representatives likely ensured that two political parties would come to dominate; Duverger's law (named after French political scientist Maurice Duverger) suggests that “the simple majority, single ballot system favours the two‐party system” because voters are inclined to only support candidates they think have a chance of winning outright, which reduces the appeal of third parties.
The emergence of a two-party system in America’s early days, then, was no surprise. Initially, the opposing parties were Federalists and Democratic-Republicans, which morphed into Whigs and Democrats after Andrew Jackson’s election, and morphed again into Republicans and Democrats after the Whigs split over the issue of slavery. From the middle of the 19th century on, Republicans and Democrats have remained the two major parties in the U.S., though their political positions and bases of support have evolved.
Although states have different types of primaries, most of those differences are structured around rules for participating based on party affiliation. As such, the two-party system is baked into primaries; voters choose to participate in the Republican or Democratic primary in their state, and those elections elevate the two main candidates for the general election (with some exceptions).
The history of primaries.
The United States Constitution originally left it to the states to determine who is qualified to vote in elections. Early on, states broadly required voters to be white, male landowners, with some areas also restricting voting to Christians. The earliest votes were cast out loud at local courthouses, often amidst a raucous environment, as had been done prior to the ratification of the Constitution. In the early 1800s, the “secret ballot” came into use across the United States. There was no formal way to register to vote, but voters had to swear an oath that they met voter eligibility requirements. It wasn’t until 1888 that states, beginning with New York and Massachusetts, began to issue standardized ballots amidst concerns of voter fraud.
Just after the Constitution’s ratification, the president and vice president were determined by electors in the Electoral College, who were themselves chosen by state delegates. Unlike today, the president and vice president did not run together; the individual with the most votes became president and the runner-up became vice president. The Twelfth Amendment, which required separate votes for president and vice president, changed this in 1804.
After a runoff election between John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson in 1824, conventions emerged to give party leaders more control in the selection of candidates. With party leaders choosing candidates, the individuals they chose at conventions did not always reflect the will of the people, and opened the door to rampant corruption that was commonplace in the politics of the late 1800s.
Democrats in Crawford County, Pennsylvania, were among the first in the nation to enact changes by instituting a system that enabled any Democratic voter to go to a local meeting and nominate candidates for election. In the 1860s and early 1870s, California, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania all instituted direct primaries, where voters selected party candidates instead of delegates. During the Progressive Era, reformers wanted to give more say to the general public in choosing political candidates and mitigate power of party leadership. Although 20 Democratic and Republican parties had primary elections by 1916, the primary system was not fully implemented until after World War II, leaving power in the hands of party bosses.
Primaries, particularly the New Hampshire primary, continued to gain power in the 20th century. The New Hampshire primary has typically been held first and can either lead to a boost in publicity or, if a candidate performs poorly, can end a campaign. After a 1968 election again chose a convention-picked nominee instead of a voter-chosen one, reforms within both parties led to a more voter-centric process. “Super Tuesday,” a day on which many states hold primaries, gained prominence in the 1984 presidential election, when nine primaries and caucuses were held on the same day. This year, 16 states held their primaries on Super Tuesday.
Criticisms of primaries.
Our primaries have evolved over time to try to do one thing: Nominate candidates from our major political parties for voters to choose in the general election. In order to accomplish that goal, our current system takes on a few secondary functions.
First, it represents the will of the voters who comprise the party. Second, it allows the candidates to meet the voters — by crafting a primary calendar that gives time for candidates to travel to different states and meet face-to-face with party members, voters get to actually get to know the people they’re putting forward as their nominees. Third, it provides a vetting process for each candidate — running in a party primary requires hopefuls to meet a threshold of support and test their viewpoints against their opponents’. Lastly, it limits corruption in the nominating process — party leaders don’t just meet together in smoke-filled rooms to decide who represents their party; instead, candidates have to campaign to win the support of their registered party in order to get on the general election ballot.
The primary system we have now achieves these goals to a much higher degree than those that predated it. However, it isn’t perfect; and many critics will say that it not only frequently fails to meet its goals, but the way it attempts to do so creates other problems.
Two of those critics talked with us about their issues, as well as their proposed solutions. Nick Troiano, whom we interviewed last year, is the executive director of Unite America and the author of the book The Primary Solution. We also talked with Steve Hough, the leader of the Florida Fair and Open Primaries organization and author of a reader essay on open primaries. Their criticisms boil down to four key points.
1. Primary winners don’t represent the will of the party. It has been well reported that about 80% of registered voters do not participate in the primary process. “In some states even like Florida, almost a third of the voters can't even participate because they're not registered with the major party,” Steve Hough told us.
While many of these voters are independent, the majority of party members choose not to participate for various social reasons. It’s easy to blame that on apathy and say the fix lies with the electorate, but since participation has been low and trending lower for decades, it’s possible a structural issue is at play. According to a Yale study, voters find the costs of participating in the primary greater, see the stakes as lower, and feel a pressure to defer to those who know more than they do.
Voters also have a tough time keeping track of the different primaries for local, state, and presidential elections that don’t align; and when 67% of all races go uncontested, voters can reasonably feel apathetic about participating.
Furthermore, in presidential election years, the primary schedule prevents most voters from ever getting a say in their party’s nomination. We’ll get into that next, but ultimately, the low turnout in primaries makes it very hard to say that the results represent the will of the party.
2. Most voters actually don’t meet the candidates. In 2020, the primary schedule ran from February 3 to August 11 (longer than the NFL season), which required a large amount of money for a candidate to be able to actually compete and incentivized them to draw media attention and donors — not to meet the voters.
Because of the staggered schedule, the vast majority of voters don’t get to choose from the same set of options as the slim number of party members who make their selections early.
“While the current schedule can help level the playing field for an upstart candidate, it can also be problematic, because the early states that enjoy this outsized influence (especially Iowa and New Hampshire) tend to be small and unrepresentative of the nation’s demographics,” Troiano wrote in his book. “In contrast, large and diverse states like California and Texas often go so late, after numerous contenders have dropped out, that their results have little impact on the ultimate nomination.”
3. Candidates are vetted, but encouraged to be more partisan. According to research from Unite America, 83% of Congressional districts in the country are considered “safe,” meaning that the winner of the dominant party’s primary will be the de facto winner of the general election. Furthermore, only 21.3% of the nation’s registered voters participated in the primary process. That means that a small minority of voters end up selecting the majority of their congressional representatives, which ends up influencing party positions, and in turn ends up setting agendas and platforms for all party candidates across the country.
“So that's all to say that about 8% of America decided 83% of our Congress. It's hard to call that a functional democracy when 30 million Americans were locked out of those same primary elections — Democrats, Republicans, and independents,” Troiano told us.
Meanwhile, closed or semi-closed primaries — which are the majority of the presidential primaries — end up locking out the increasing number of independent voters, which is currently at an all-time high. That can cause a vicious cycle where party candidates get more extreme, which creates incentives for more people to ditch their party, which causes more extreme candidates. Those locked-out independent voters are then left with no choice but to vote against the candidate they least prefer in the general election.
4. Non-competitive primaries can still be corrupted. “Gone forever are the days of party bosses handpicking candidates for each office and tightly controlling voters’ options in the general election, and we should be grateful for that,” Troiano wrote. However, primaries can still be corrupted.
For starters, there are still a great number of uncontested primary races (though the exact total is hard to track). In many local elections, party candidates are effectively chosen by the party, and then unchallenged in non-competitive districts.
We saw a similar dynamic play out in the Democratic and Republican presidential primaries this year. President Biden essentially ran uncontested despite poll after poll showing that Democratic voters wanted another option. Former President Trump was more clearly favored by Republican voters, but he was allowed to skip key parts of the primary process (the debates) without pushback from the RNC. In both cases, centralized party control over the primary process gave huge advantages to their preferred candidate.
Lastly, as we mentioned above, many state or local elections occur in non-competitive districts, where the primary election is the de facto general election and only registered voters from a party get a say in their representation. Attempts to fix this have been stymied by major-party interests.
“At the last Florida Constitutional Commission in 1998, they proposed an amendment which said that if only one party is putting up candidates, then the primary would be a universal open primary,” Hough told us. “Both the Democrats and Republicans found a loophole that they would enlist a bogus write-in candidate to pose as ’opposition,’ which would keep those primaries closed. Over 20 years, about 114 races were closed. 8.2 million voters were disenfranchised. It's just so frustrating because it circumvents the will of the voters and the politicians won't do anything to fix it.”
Potential alternatives.
If states were to move away from their existing primary systems, what alternatives make the most sense? Advocates for reforming our primaries suggest several approaches, some of which build on existing systems. Below, we’ll cover four of the most common proposals, along with the pros and cons of each.
Top-two, top-four, and top-five primaries
What is it: A top-two primary is already used for statewide races in California and Washington; as discussed above, it pools all candidates (regardless of party affiliation) on a single ballot. Voters then choose one candidate to support, and the top two vote-getters advance to the general election. The closest analog to a top-two primary for a presidential process is a blanket primary, in which all candidates are on one ballot, but the top vote-getters from each party advance to the general election.
A top-four system operates the same way as a top-two, but four candidates advance to a general election that uses ranked-choice voting to determine the winner. A top-five system advances five candidates to the general election.
Supporters: Advocates say these systems reduce the influence of party-hardliners and benefit moderate candidates, who could legislate in the interests of the entire constituency rather than the fringes that elected them. Some research has borne this out, showing that states with top-two primaries have started electing more moderate candidates.
Within these three systems, proponents of a top-four approach say it gives voters even more choices while allowing third parties to compete on an equal footing. They use as an example the 2022 House race in Alaska, in which moderate Democrat Mary Peltola advanced to the general election alongside two Republicans, then won (the fourth candidate, a Democrat, withdrew). On net, Alaska’s system has produced a never-Trump Republican senator, a Democratic House representative, and a pro-Trump governor.
Top-five advocates argue that advancing five candidates to the general election creates the opportunity for a clear “middle” against which candidates from the left and right will be defined, as well as allowing more opportunities for independents. New America, a policy advocacy organization, writes that under any of these primaries, “Voters will have more choices at the time in which more voters are paying attention; and more candidates will have an incentive to distinguish themselves by the quality of their ideas, rather than simply by being the lesser of two evils.”
Opponents: Critics of this system say it is not the moderating force supporters claim it to be, and it can reward new kinds of problematic political activity. They use the example of California’s 2024 Senate primary, in which one of the leading Democratic candidates, Rep. Adam Schiff, spent heavily to boost Republican Steve Garvey in the primary so he could face him in the general election instead of one of the other Democrats in the race. Schiff succeeded and is now heavily favored against Garvey in November.
Further, in heavily Republican or Democratic states, it’s unclear that a top-two (or even -four or -five) primary would result in more moderate candidates. UC San Diego political scientist Thad Kousser noted that in California, “Top-two has given voters more candidate choices in the primary and different choices in the November elections. But it hasn’t changed who voters have elected or the type of candidate they’ve elected.” Others argue that in heavily Democratic or Republican states, a top four- or -five system could exclude the minority party’s candidates in the event that all of the leading vote-getters are from one party.
Data on states that have adopted top-two primaries show that they’ve had little impact on voter turnout or independent voter participation. In other words, even if a top-four or -five system would theoretically produce a greater variety of candidates, there’s no guarantee that it would address one of the root problems of primaries: turnout.
Open primaries
What is it: In this system, voters of any political affiliation are eligible to cast their ballot for any party, but they may only participate in one party’s primary. They do not need to register beforehand and can choose the party primary they want to participate in on election day.
Supporters: Twenty states already use open primaries for congressional or state-level offices, but proponents of the system argue it should be adopted in all states. Open primaries are designed to promote greater voter engagement in the political process by removing party registration as a barrier to participation. 43% of U.S. voters identified as independents in 2022, and open primaries are a way to include them in the process.
Whereas closed primaries can exacerbate political polarization, open primaries reduce the influence of parties and allow voters to vote more based on the quality of a candidate than the letter next to their name.
Proponents of open primaries also note that state primaries are funded by tax dollars, but people who pay taxes for the administration of those elections may be barred from participating if their state has a closed primary — a form of taxation without representation.
Opponents: Critics of open primaries say the rationale for closed primaries is simple: To have a hand in choosing a party’s nominee, you should have to be a member of that party. The American Conservative’s Frank DeVito said, “The primary election is the modern mechanism for the political party to select its own candidate. Open primary advocates want to accomplish the goal of having more moderate candidates that are palatable to more people outside the party. But that is not the point of a primary. The primary is meant to select the candidate preferred by the party.”
Further, open primaries create the opportunity for members of opposing parties to sabotage or influence the results, by either elevating a weaker candidate or voting against a stronger one. The University of Denver’s Seth Masket wrote, “Allowing Independents and Republicans to select the Democrats' next nominees, or some other combination, is a good way to destroy a party and its meaning." Masket also noted that the barrier to participation in closed primaries is low — voters just need to register ahead of time, which is a simple process.
Ranked-choice primaries
What is it: Broadly, ranked-choice voting (RCV) is an election system in which voters rank candidates by preference, instead of choosing a single candidate to support. The most common form of ranked-choice voting is instant-runoff voting. In this system, if a candidate wins a majority of first-preference votes, they are the winner; but if no candidate wins a majority, the candidate with the fewest first-preference votes is eliminated, and the ballots that had that candidate as their top choice are recounted with their second-preference candidate moving up for a second round of vote tabulation. For more details, Ballotpedia has a helpful explainer.
Three states use RCV statewide: Alaska and Maine use it in federal and statewide elections, while Hawaii uses it in certain statewide elections. Meanwhile, ten states have legislation prohibiting the use of RCV in elections. In primaries, RCV would function similarly to a top-two, -four or -five system, with all candidates on a single ballot. Since primaries only determine who advances to the general election, an RCV primary would likely precede an RCV general, in which a set number of candidates would advance (i.e. the first, second, and third most preferred candidates), and the general election would serve as another round of RCV with fewer candidates on the ballot.
Supporters: Proponents of RCV primaries say the system guarantees the candidate with the broadest range of support wins while making everyone’s vote more impactful even if their top candidate doesn’t win. It follows, they say, that RCV boosts turnout in elections. A 2024 study found that voters in RCV jurisdictions were 17% more likely to turn out for municipal elections than those in non-RCV jurisdictions, and many other studies have shown similar results.
Some argue that RCV disincentivizes polarizing rhetoric on the campaign trail. “It shifts incentives away from negative campaigning—because candidates are trying not just to turn out their base, but also to win as many second- and third-choice votes as possible,” wrote The Economist in 2018. In that sense, it also reduces the likelihood that “spoiler” candidates can take away critical support from the leading candidates.
Others suggest that RCV enables voters to support the candidates they genuinely like, rather than trying to prevent a candidate they don’t like from winning. FairVote says, “Voters know that if their first choice doesn’t win, their vote automatically counts for their next choice instead. This frees voters from worrying about how others will vote and which candidates are more or less likely to win.”
Opponents: Critics of RCV say that the process is confusing and results in improperly discarded ballots, errors in tabulating votes, delayed election results, and overall lower confidence in the outcome. Alaska State Sen. Mike Shower (R) claimed that in the state’s 2022 elections, 11% of the ballots in Alaska in 2022 were “spoiled” due to voter confusion under ranked-choice, compared to 3% under the prior system of one candidate, one vote. A common reason a ballot is discarded in an RCV system is the voter selected only one candidate and did not rank the others — meaning their top choice isn’t counted at all. In Alaska’s 2022 House race, over 11,000 ballots were tossed for this reason in an election decided by around 5,000 votes.
Other opponents say the suggestion that RCV results in more moderate candidate winning is flawed. Professors Nathan Atkinson and Scott C. Ganz offer this example: “In a three-person race, the moderate candidate may be preferred to each of the more extreme candidates by a majority of voters. However, voters with far-left and far-right views will rank the candidate in second place rather than in first place. Since ranked-choice voting counts only the number of first-choice votes (among the remaining candidates), the moderate candidate would be eliminated in the first round.”
Organizations like the Foundation for Government Accountability have come out strongly against RCV on the grounds that it forces voters to implicitly support candidates they don’t like, as they must rank every candidate on the ballot. That requirement, they say, can result in “winners losing and losers winning.” They highlight Maine’s 2018 House race, writing, “Under traditional election rules, the Republican Bruce Poliquin would have prevailed with 46.33 percent of the vote versus Democrat Jared Golden’s 45.58 percent. The Democrat candidate that was declared the winner never even truly received a majority of the vote, he only did so after thousands of ballots were thrown in the trash.”
National Primary Day
What it is: First proposed in 1911, a national primary day would institute a single presidential primary held in all states on the same day. The winner of each party’s respective primary would become the nominee for that party.
Supporters: Proponents argue that a national primary day would allow all states to have a fair say in choosing each party’s nominee, eliminating the outsized impact of early states like Iowa and New Hampshire. They also suggest voter participation would increase with a national primary day. Economist Richard Keckhauser and writer Derek Leebaert claim that this would make campaigns shorter, requiring candidates to still “need the physical endurance of athletes, but perhaps not that of marathon runners,” and that the role of the media would decrease in shaping presidential races.
Opponents: Critics note the intense logistical burden of hosting a national primary for a candidate’s campaign. This system, they argue, would favor those campaigns with the resources to run expensive advertising and other campaign efforts across all 50 states simultaneously. “The old saying is that any man can run for President,” said Truman, “but as a practical matter it isn’t true, because not every man can afford it.”
Former Alabama Secretary of State Beth Chapman looked to 2008 as a case study: On February 5, 2008, 24 states, nearly half the nation, held a primary or caucus, in what Chapman referred to as “essentially a de facto national primary.” She emphasized “the situation was so bad for overwhelmed campaigns, party leaders, and election officials that the two parties worked together to ensure their rules for 2012 would help avoid a repeat.” In addition to disadvantaging lesser-known candidates who require more time to build support, opponents argue that candidates would focus their campaigns on higher population states, leaving state political parties with little control over the nominee.
My take.
We don’t endorse political candidates in Tangle, but every now and then we will support some policy position that we think makes sense to adopt. We’ve written about immigration reform, nuclear energy, the death penalty, and military funding, just to name a few. And now we’re going to add “primary reform” to the list.
Something I always tell readers is that “you vote for a candidate in the primary, and against one in the general.” It’s a simple idea, but over time, I’ve had to recognize that it just doesn’t work in an era of independent voters (and with a presidential primary where most voters never get the chance to vote for their preferred candidate). So, to me, something has to change. It’s that simple.
I was initially skeptical about bolder claims on how our primary system is driving partisanship in our country. Yes, partisanship has obviously been on the rise in the United States the last 30 years: Democrats’ very unfavorable views of Republicans has risen by 22% while Republicans' very unfavorable view of Democrats has risen by 26%. The share of Americans who express consistently conservative or liberal views has doubled. Polarization can lead to a lack of trust in other people, a belief that those who disagree are enemies, and even political violence.
However, I was not so sure that our primary system is a main driver of that division. After all, the primaries we have today have not changed too much in the last century, so it seems unlikely they’d be a root cause for an issue that’s risen over the past few decades. What I have been quick to blame is the way our national news media has adapted to new technologies — the 24-hour cable news panic cycle, the online outrage-driven click machine, and the push for consumer loyalty that leads so many news organizations to signal their allegiance to one team or another.
I still believe that’s true — but no media company can address polarization in our government. Actual structural reforms are going to be required to reshape our political representation. And these are the reforms that make the most sense to me:
A national primary day. Semi-closed primaries. A top-five advancement to a general election system, with pick-two ranked-choice voting at both stages. We got into the benefits and drawbacks of each system above, so I won’t repeat myself too much here; but I’ll describe the reason for my support for each part briefly.
National primary day: This is the one I’ve struggled with the most, especially as it relates to presidential primaries. I’ve always appreciated that candidates have to go out and meet voters in parts of the country they wouldn’t otherwise go to in order to earn a presidential nomination. A primary schedule allows candidates to do that. However, in an era of instant communication, we don’t need to spend a lot of time and a lot of money sending candidates (and their support staff and security teams) around the country for voters to learn who they are. Modern technology allows us to access them virtually. With a national primary day, voters in New Hampshire and Iowa will certainly see their influence decrease — but voters everywhere else will finally get the say they never had. That sounds like a good tradeoff to me. When everyone’s vote actually matters, and when everyone knows when to cast it, turnout will be driven up even more. And if you align local, state, and federal primaries to all happen at the same time, then the rising tide lifts all boats.
Semi-closed primaries: Whether it’s a semi-closed, partially open, or fully open primary to me is less important than primaries just not being closed. I understand that one of the functions of a political party is to nominate a candidate for an election, but in a system where the primary election is often just as important — if not more important — than the general election, I want that primary election to include as many people as possible. To me, a semi-closed primary (where registered voters participate in their party’s primary while non-registered voters get to choose one) is the best compromise between retaining that function and opening the door to every voter.
Top-five advancement: Sending two candidates to the general election from the major two parties is great. Having the option to send the top-four vote-getters regardless of party is even better. Allowing it to be five, which would create a “middle option” and give more realistic opportunities to a third-party candidate to get on the ballot, sounds better still. Katherine Gehl, the founder of the Institute for Political Innovation, argues that five is the “Goldilocks” number. “Creating space for a fifth candidate ensures a lower barrier for diverse startup candidates,” Gehl writes. “Not only might these candidates present new and exciting policy innovations, but their presence challenges the duopoly, preventing the major parties from evading accountability.” I totally agree.
Top-two ranked-choice voting: To me, the biggest benefit of ranked-choice voting is that, when paired with instant runoffs, the winner is almost guaranteed to get the majority of votes. I appreciate that, in theory, less extreme candidates win, but that’s window dressing to me. A district can put forward a blue-blooded or red-blooded hard-liner to represent them if they want, as long as that person actually is the representative they choose. The best criticism against ranked-choice voting is that it can be confusing. And I don’t want to downplay that; we saw in the 2000 election how big of an impact confusing ballots can have. But that problem can be solved with education and experience. Plus, a top-two choice, where voters select their preferred candidate and then one backup candidate, seems like a great compromise between giving voters more options and limiting confusion. And if we don’t throw out ballots that only select one option, all the better.
Lastly, it’s possible that some of these reforms don’t work, or even backfire. I don’t think that’s a good enough reason not to try them. Our country has a history of evolving and finding new ways to move forward, so if we roll out an initiative that fails, we can always fix it, roll it back again, or come up with a new solution that’s even better.
However, I don’t think primary reform will fail. I think taking common-sense steps to address flaws in our primary system will in fact lead to more turnout, more representative elected officials, and less polarization. And I think that now is the time to try.
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