Are partisan primaries the best we can do for choosing candidates?
Tune in today at 3pm ET as we discuss the subject!
This afternoon, Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law is holding a webinar to discuss how we structure our elections. Speakers are Prof. Ned Foley, Prof. Steven Heufner, Deb Otis (Fair Vote), and yours truly.
Tune in here. Don’t let the nerdy program title throw you—the subject matter is fundamental. We are discussing how we structure voting so as to produce the best candidates and elected officials.
This is a major issue for our Republic, because in much of the country the members of our national legislature are chosen through partisan primaries.
Partisan primaries using first-past-the-post voting became the go-to method for selecting candidates about half a century ago. And whatever the intentions, this system has problems.
Let me mention four of them:
Partisan primaries are low-turnout, which leaves maybe 20-25 of participating voters to pick the candidates who face off in the general election. And no surprise, the voters who do participate tend not to be the average citizen. Frequently they are more ideologically extreme or are single-issue voters.
Partisan primaries have been gamed by deep-pocketed politicos. For example, The Dispatch reported:
“Local attorney Jeff Hurd is the leading Republican to represent Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District, topping six GOP primary candidates with 27 percent… His closest rival is former state Rep. Ron Hanks, who has just 9 percent. But a left-wing political group and the presumptive Democratic nominee have together spent around half a million dollars on ads to bolster Hanks—an extremist who still maintains Joe Biden lost the 2020 election and who had raised less than $18,000 as of a filing earlier this month.”
Meanwhile in New York City, one interest group alone spent $10 million in hopes of unseating Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D).
This is a story frequently told: big money from the left or the right tries to boost a candidate on the other side in the hopes that it will produce a more favorable general election result. Colorado Democrats would much prefer to run against Hanks than Hurd, as the former has next to zero appeal to anyone outside the hard right.
The spending to boost Hanks failed—Hurd won. But it worked against Bowman.
Partisan primaries almost inevitably are pluralist exercises, meaning whomever gets the most single ballot votes wins. What is wrong with that? Well, we Americans end up with candidates who may not have majority support. Take Hurd-Hanks race, for example. Hurd won with 41 percent of the vote and Hanks got 28 percent. Three other candidates collectively garnered 24.3 percent of votes. So, 59 percent of voters did not support the candidate who gets to participate in the November general election. The same thing occurred in Colorado’s 4th district yesterday. Rep. Lauren Boebert (R), who represents the state’s third district, moved to the fourth district because she feared losing in the upcoming election. In a crowded field, Boebert got 43.4 percent of the vote. Boebert, mind you, has a weak legislative record and frequently has touched off firestorms with conduct unbecoming. Yet, she worked the primary system and now has a good shot at getting elected in November.
Not to go unmentioned is that elected officials follow incentives, and how elections are structured encourage and discourage behaviors. Do you wonder why legislators spend so much time voting on messaging bills that have no chance to becoming law? Do you feel annoyed that legislators refuse to hold votes on certain issues? Do you worry that the parties in Congress tend to prefer to own issues rather than solve problems? Well, then consider the incentives legislators face. It’s a game of strategy they are playing and the goal is reelection and winning majority control. Which leaves many of us feeling less than satisfied with how our country is being governed.
Much more can be said, and has been said. Nick Troiano has an entire book on the “primary problem.”
I hope you will tune in today and join the discussion. We’re Americans—we can build a better mousetrap. That’s what we do.