By: John C. Lesher
It is common in liberal democracies governed by parliamentary procedure to see voting rates of 70% or more of eligible voters. A few such governments have a legal requirement for voting, but even if the voting-mandate nations are not considered, parliamentary-based nations experience voluntary participation rates 15-25% higher than in America. With rare exceptions, voting rates by Americans peak at 50-55% of eligible voters during our quadrennial Presidential election cycles and fall off from those low levels by, roughly, a further 20% in mid-term general election cycles. Our primary election performances are even worse—much worse. This obviously begs two questions: why? and ,what effect does this have on our electoral future?
Make Electoral Politics Attractive
In the opinion of this author, the three P’s of polarization, participation and primaries comprise a witches’ brew that will spell the death knell of the two-party system that has served Americans so well for so many years unless steps are taken to make electoral politics more attractive and meaningful to the voting public. Parliamentary-style electoral processes have much to teach us that can be applied to American elections with very positive effect. Parliamentary systems often have candidates contesting for office from a diverse selection of political parties; there are no tightly grouped and antipodal “liberal” or “conservative” blocs with a vacuum in between, as is often the case in an ideologically-polarized American contest. In a parliamentary election, most often there is a continuum of political thought that has a significant centrist element, in addition to leftist liberal and rightist conservative factions. Also, parliamentary systems frequently have small, fringe parties that appeal to single-issue constituencies. This combination of a candidate/party structure that appeals to a very broad base of political opinion, as well as to those who have strong single-issue agendas, gives voters an eclectic mix of choices and frequently has the dual effect of producing high levels of voter participation along with a moderation of ideological extremism among candidates.
Lowered polarization and high voting participation rates are desirable attributes in any democracy, and are particularly needed in today’s America. Citizen disgust with uncompromising ideology and polarization is evident in voter registration statistics. Americans are registering without party affiliation at rapidly increasing rates; depending on source, anywhere from one-third to 40% of currently-registered voters opt for non-affiliated (AKA “Independent") status. My belief is that parties are in decline and the two-party system is endangered by this unwillingness to register with a party affiliation, although this is a controversial and disputed topic.
How can we, as a society, reverse the tendency of Americans to be indifferent to voting and electoral participation, and simultaneously mitigate the extreme partisanship in our elected assemblies? I believe the key is our primary system. We must end closed primaries.
You Can Vote Only in the Party Primary for Which You are Registered
A closed primary is one in which the only votes cast are by party-registered voters. A voter can vote only for candidates running on the slate of the party for which the voter has registered. Independents in closed primary states can vote in general elections, but have no right to participate in the primary election process by which candidates get on the general election ballot in the first place.
There is a causal chain started by this primary election disenfranchisement. Since only Party registrants can vote in closed primaries, only those committed to some degree to that Party’s ideology have a say in candidate selection for the general election. The consequence is that candidates in closed primaries appeal to the Party’s base. That base is quite liberal for Democrats and quite conservative for Republicans. Primary candidates compete to show their ideological colors by announcing themselves as more liberal (Democrats) or more conservative (Republicans) than their primary opponents. The tendency is to move farther and farther to the right or the left and abandon the center. The moderate center has been lost because the Independents who do not choose to be ideologically-based voters cannot exercise the vital democratic right of voting in a closed primary. Rightist-dominated and leftist-dominated party slates for general elections are the result. With few centrist victors in primary contests in closed primary states, the inevitable next step in the causal sequence is legislatures filled with leftist and rightist ideologues who are inflexible in legislative and social policy matters.
This is a recipe for instant polarization and legislative inertia and explains in great measure the wide-spread reluctance of American citizens to participate in the electoral process. Political scientists often assert that the typical American voter is a “median” voter—a centrist who evaluates issues one at a time and who does not have ideological rigidity. However, if the closed primary set-up restricts centrist candidates from being included on general election ballots, why bother to vote if you are a registered Independent and centrist who has no appealing general election choice?
Open Primary Systems Needed
What to do? States, which have the constitutionally-based right to enact their election protocols, must adopt “open” primary systems if we are ever going to have any semblance of comity and bi-partisanship in our legislative chambers. As of the 2016 election cycle, there were 31 states that had closed primaries; the remaining 19 had some variant of an “open” primary where, depending on the system adopted, independent voters could cast ballots in primary elections and/or voters could “cross-vote” (Dems voting for Repubs or visa versa). Since then, several additional states have moved closer to open primaries, but the number is still far too low. Also, uniformity of rules is not present.
The only state with a truly wide-open primary in which all registrants can vote for any candidate is California and its “top two” system. In “top two” the party elites can select candidates to run for office, but individual citizens also can get themselves listed on the ballot by meeting certain qualification standards. The mix of candidates—party-backed and citizens who are self-promoted—are placed on a single ballot which lists all candidates for all state and local offices. This primary makes no distinction by Party or Independent status. All registered California voters go to the polls on a single primary election day and vote for candidates for each contested office. Within each office, the “top two” vote-recipients, regardless of Party, compete in the general election. Yes, the general election could have two Democrats or two Republicans opposing each other. Nine of California’s 53 House of Representative contests in 2014 had same-party general election candidates.
Decades ago, when almost every registered voter selected one of the two major parties, and when Democrats had a conservative wing and Republicans had a moderate wing (remember Nelson Rockefeller?), voters had broad choices and the closed primary system of candidate selection worked fairly well. Voting participation rates were high, relative to today, and polarization was far lower. However, once our obsession with ideology took hold, and polarization became its consequence, party loyalty among registrants declined and the contemporary result is a restricted primary system that produces polarization and discourages participation and endangers the two-party system. We need to have all states adopt fully open primaries whereby all voters, regardless of Party affiliation, can vote for any candidate on a single primary election day. This is nothing more than the application of the eligibility rules for a general election to a primary election.
Open primaries aren’t a silver bullet that will increase participation to 100%, eliminate polarization and single-handedly resuscitate the two-party system, but to paraphrase liberally Churchill’s comment about Democracy, “open primaries are the worst form of selection, except for all the others.”