Blanket Primaries Smother Democracy
Recently Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt opined on Twitter that the system utilized for municipal elections in the city might be a good reform to implement for statewide elections. The process he suggests is a Top Two system similar to that used in the states of California and Washington, also called a blanket primary, in which all candidates regardless of party affiliation appear on one ballot and the two candidates with the most votes then advance to a second election to decide who wins the office. At first glance many find this idea attractive but on close inspection it does not result in more moderate candidates, reduces choices for general election voters, and creates instances that directly thwart the will of the majority. There are other reforms that, unlike the harmful blanket primary, would empower voters and increase election fairness.
One key difference between municipal and state elections in Oklahoma is that most municipal election voters understand the first round to be the general election. Indeed, a wide majority of municipal races never even go to a runoff due to one candidate getting a majority in the first round, a guaranteed outcome when it’s a field of two. In contrast, state and federal primaries always have a much smaller number of voters as most people correctly view the real election as being the general election in November. Presumably we want the most important election to be the one when the most voters show up to the polls. Holt and others rightly argue that under our present system that often isn’t the case with some races decided in a primary by a minority, but making all races be mostly decided in a primary by a minority is not only no better, it’s actually worse.
Most advocates for election reforms see the domination of the two establishment parties and the monied interests that support them as detrimental and want to move towards a more level playing field where alternative candidates and those with less special interest backing have an opportunity to compete. These top two(or three or four or five) schemes promise such a result, but deliver the opposite. No matter how many slots are available, there is usually enough political money and ambition for the usual suspects to fill them up and leave alternative candidates out in the cold. Only in rare instances where there aren’t enough typical Democrat or Republican politicians willing to file for a particular office do we see unaffiliated or alternative party folks make it into one of the general election slots, but even then they still get swamped by big political dollars and establishment clout. Not only that, but sometimes one of the establishment parties gets shut out as has happened in numerous statewide races in California. Perversely, it can work out where the majority of primary voters choose a candidate from one establishment party only to have the general election ballot feature none with only candidates of the other party to have advanced. This has happened four times in California state legislative races and most spectacularly in the 2016 Washington State Treasurer election. In a field of two Republicans and three Democrats 51.56% of voters chose one of the Democrats but they split so evenly that the two Republicans advanced. This possibility of thwarting the majority results in the establishment parties actively dissuading some candidates from running, another way in which these blanket primaries work to reduce voter choice. Alaska is having a special election to replace Rep. Don Young in Congress but will still have the regular election in November as well, four Democrats filed for both elections but now that one has advanced in the special the other three have withdrawn from the November election as well.
Despite all of these demonstrable failures of blanket primaries, some will maintain that they are a moderating influence, driving candidates to run to the center rather than the extremes. This may be true for those running under the label of the smaller establishment party, with Democrats in red states seeking to appear moderate and Republicans in blue states promising to be more willing to compromise, but there’s no evidence that either the underdogs are winning more or that the majoritarians feel any need to appeal beyond their base. Top Two is in place in Washington and California, both of those state legislatures are rated among the five most partisan in the country. Closer to home, the council on which Mayor Holt sits is quite ideologically divided, with three members who would be described as very liberal and two to five who would be labeled very conservative depending on who you ask. Holt may think of the body as “unifying” but regular council observers would not agree.
Blanket primaries result in fewer choices due to machinations by the establishment parties and special interests to have their candidates take up the general election slots, fewer choices when the minority of voters who participate in primaries winnow the field and leave for the majority who go to the polls in November a ballot with a couple of names that don’t represent the wide but hidden variety of viewpoints, disinterested electorates that know they don’t have choice and so don’t bother to show up, and more remote and out-of-touch office holders who don’t have to become more moderate because they just have to win, place, or show by even just the tiniest amount and then compete in a Kang versus Kodos general election.
An election reform that would empower voters would give them more ways to express their preferences. Ranked choice voting, also called instant runoff, does that by allowing the individual to mark their first choice, second, third, and so on. If no candidate has a majority after the first choices are counted, the one with the fewest is eliminated from the race and those ballots go to the second choice. The process repeats until there is a candidate with a majority. Thus, candidates are incentivized to appeal to a majority while avoiding the negative campaigning that might cost them second or third choice votes that may be needed to win. Voters get to cast ballots in one go for as many runoffs as are needed and no longer have to even think about the so-called wasted vote, all in one trip to the polls where they are guaranteed that the resulting winner will have to have obtained support from a majority.
Those who are most concerned about the influence of parties should be very wary of blanket primaries that as we have seen will only bolster the stranglehold of the Republicans and Democrats on our political system. A modest reform would be to eliminate straight-party voting in the handful of states, including Oklahoma, where it is still in place. A more ambitious idea would be to remove party labels altogether. It should be incumbent upon candidates to communicate to the public what they stand for, including the party with which they align. One day we might even go so far as eliminate the official status of partisan nominees, something was invented with the regulations accompanying the paper ballot, and make those processes entirely private while continuing to accommodate the full range of choices for voters.
