The reformers' agenda

Primary election reformers understand political science research; here's what they're trying to do despite it

I recently attended a three-day research symposium on primary elections in Washington, DC. It was hosted by Unite America, an organization that is devoted to a variety of reforms to primary elections, and the National Institute for Civil Discourse. What made this event particularly interesting and valuable was that it included a large number of both scholars and reform advocates, and I found it helpful to understand just what advocates see as the need for reforms.

I am generally a reform skeptic in this area. That is, research I and others have done suggest that it doesn’t matter much how open or closed a primary election is (that is, how easy it is for people not registered with a party to participate in its primary election) — they all seem to produce similar sorts of officeholders. The most open primaries nominate candidates who are just as ideologically extreme, on average, as those selected by the most closed primaries. My 2016 book The Inevitable Party examined a number of different party reforms and found that whatever impact they have tends to be pretty short-lived; parties are dominated by networks of innovative leaders, candidates, and policy demanders who soon learn how to master a new set of rules.

I’ll note that some more recent research sees slight moderating effects from systems like California’s top-two election system (where candidates of all parties compete against each other in the first round, and then the top two vote-getters face each other in a November runoff regardless of party). California’s legislature is still massively more polarized than almost every other legislature in the country, but not quite so much as it was before the reform was adopted a decade ago.

In a forthcoming book, Robert Boatright looks at the past century of primary reforms and finds that they tend not to accomplish all that much in terms of officeholder behavior. However, they do tend to advantage one faction within a party over another. Primaries tend to be changed when a dominant faction fears it’s about to become the minority.

What struck me at this conference was that people on the reform side seemed aware of much of this research. We were not exactly speaking the same language, but we seemed to have a similar sense of just what reforms could and couldn’t do, and they’re devoting their lives to pushing reforms anyway. Their reasons for advocating primary reform fell into roughly three buckets:

1. Government effectiveness

At least some of the reformers, especially those from more conservative states, were pushing for more open primary systems like California-style top-two or Alaskan-style top-four (all candidates across parties compete against each other, with the top four vote-getters going to a November runoff under ranked-choice voting rules) because they thought it could improve governance in the statehouse. Several reformers described the Republican Party in their state as divided between somewhat more pragmatic traditional conservatives and more MAGA-style populists, with varying degrees of control over government and politics for each of those factions. There seemed to be frustration with the MAGA types in government, not so much for their policies, but for their disinterest in policy altogether. The reformers are pushing changes so that the MAGA movement exerts less direct pressure over officeholders through primary challenges and insulates officeholders a bit to actually engage in the act of governing, and maybe once in a while passing things like Medicaid expansion.

2. Voter Empowerment

This motivation covered a lot of ground. As a number of reformers noted, most Americans live in congressional or state legislative districts that just aren’t very competitive, and their general election votes matter little. For these voters, participating in a primary election at least offers some chance to hold officeholders accountable. But they can’t participate in many states if they’re not a member of a party.

Now, I tend to take the view that it’s not particularly hard to join a party if you really want to vote in a primary; by the standards of other democracies, U.S. parties make it incredibly easy to join, and you don’t even have to pay dues or come to meetings. However, as several Alaskans at this conference pointed out^[1], Alaska Natives are highly unlikely to be members of a party for longstanding historical reasons, and yet wish to participate in this selection process, the outcome of which can have a great deal of impact on them and their communities.

Others claimed that more open primaries or top-two or top-four systems give voters more choices, which is technically true but it’s not obvious to me what this accomplishes. Some surveys show that voters want more options in elections, although I don’t believe those who live in party systems with more options feel more confident in their state or party system or are getting better government out of it.

At least one reformer pushed the argument that as a taxpayer, she is paying for primaries and thus should be allowed to participate in them even if she’s not a member of the party. (I’d note that my tax dollars pay for quite a few things —including the GI Bill, farm subsidies, and K-12 education — that I am not currently eligible for and yet am perfectly okay with funding.)

3. Killing Parties

Not too many reformers seemed that interested in ending parties, and most seemed to accept the political science viewpoint that parties are vital for democratic governance. However, one former officeholder, Mickey Edwards (who represented Oklahoma’s 5th congressional district as a Republican from 1977 to 1993), lamented parties and partisanship, blamed parties for preventing good people from running for office, described the party-centered view of politics as akin to the heliocentric view of the solar system, and depicted himself as the Galileo who can see the better system of the future. Mickey often participates in conferences like this and knows he’s triggering political scientists and that we’re triggering him and he is sincerely a great sport about it.

Anyway, there’s a lot more reform to come: several states, possibly including Colorado, will vote this fall on whether to adopt some new systems this year along the lines of Alaska’s system. At least from the reformers’ perspective, there may be some value in just reshuffling the decks once in a while, if for nothing else than to occasionally put a new faction in charge.

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^[1] There were at least five Alaskans at this DC conference. One attendee from Germany estimated that he was closer to home than the Alaskans were.