In Demand of Open Primaries (’cause they’re all over the map)
If there is one common thread amongst voters in this primary season, it’s frustration. I know, this isn’t new to presidential primaries, but this year, there seems to be a particular and pervasive frustration with the process. From Bernie supporters, to Trump supporters, and Hillary supporters in between, people are upset. Something about this year’s race is shedding a light on how this whole thing works, or more accurately, doesn’t.
Enough has been said about the ridiculously undemocratic system of super-delegates, so let’s just leave that alone. There’s been another slowly creeping aspect of this race that has been frustrating the general political-theater-goer at low simmering levels, and that is the non-uniformity of it all. Some states have caucuses, some states have primaries, some states have open primaries, some states have closed primaries, some states are winner take all, some are proportional. Until a couple of days ago, I had no idea, some states had none! (Colorado’s Republican “Convention” of 10 second speeches — so weird!)
The process is so disparate and convoluted, its enough to distract from a glaring problem with the system — voter disenfranchisement through closed primaries. Both parties do it. Not in every state, but in lots. It seems like a quirky preference. Some people like their butter cold, some like it room temperature. Some people use a vegan alternative. But its more insidious than butter. Or even vegans.
With last week’s New York primary, it became clearer than ever that not only were these weirdly concocted nominating methods confusing and disparate, they are often flat-out unfair and undemocratic. New York happens to be about the worst offender, so let’s examine its closed primary rules. In order to vote in last week’s April 19th primaries, you had to be registered as a Democrat, and you had to do it by October 9th of 2015, more than 6 months before the primary, 4 days prior to the Democratic Party’s first televised debate, and likely prior to a wide swath of independent voters ever hearing about Martin O’Malley, Jim Webb, Lincoln Chafee, or Bernie Sanders.
As has been widely reported, Clinton has done much better than Sanders in closed-primaries. This makes a lot of sense on a couple levels. Clinton has had national name recognition and has been closely aligned and associated with the Democratic party for over 2 decades. Bernie Sanders has been a relatively unknown independent for over 2 decades, and only began running as a Democrat in 2015. The allegiance of party insiders, die-hards and devotees, to long-time standard-bearer, Clinton, certainly makes sense. What may or may not come as a surprise is that Bernie Sanders has been winning 65–70% of independent voters in the states where they’ve been allowed to vote.
How big of a difference does this make? Quite possibly all the difference. In New York, where 1.8 million total votes were cast by Democrats, 3.2 million remaining voters were registered as Independents and didn’t get to vote. If Independent voters voted at approximately the same 32% turnout as the rest of the state, and they split left/right according to state averages (approximately 2 to 1), that would have meant a little over a million extra Democratic voters. If they split 65% for Bernie, that would have added 650,000 to his column, totaling 1.413 million votes. 350,000 would have gone to Hillary, making her total 1.404 million votes. So yeah. It would have made a big difference. With Bernie’s 8th win in a row, it would have changed the national media narrative, put Hillary on her heels and potentially helped a swath of undecided voters in upcoming primaries believe in what’s possible.
If you can’t tell, I’m a Bernie supporter, so naturally I’m sore about the outcome in New York. I should have seen it coming. The media told me. I knew the poll numbers. I knew about closed primaries and how they didn’t treat Bernie well. But I believed in a shifting momentum, and an evolving public opinion. I felt like the tides were shifting, and I wanted to believe. Technically I still do, so let’s move on past the sore loser in me and keep talking.
I’m an idealist. I believe in the virtues of democracy. I don’t just want my guy in office. I want democracy to work. And this is where my sore loser moves over and I try to have some empathy for 3.2 million New Yorkers (approximately 32% of whom probably would have liked to go to the polls and participate in democracy). Rather than just being upset that they weren’t able to help my guy win another primary, I’m also upset that they didn’t get to vote. For many of them, they will never get to cast a vote for the person they wanted to be president.
Let that sink in for a minute. They won’t get to vote… for the person… they want to be president. What does that sound like? They have a word for it. Disenfranchisement.
Yes, some fraction of them will lean right and decide the eventual Republican nominee is for them. Some fraction will lean left and decide the Democratic nominee is for them. But inevitably a really big piece of that voter pie would have preferred another candidate, and unless that person runs in the general as an independent, or unless they write in a “throw away” name, they will not get to vote for who they want to be President. Not in the primary, and not in the general.
That is voter disenfranchisement.
“But they knew the rules,” you say. “All they needed to do was comply.” First of all, independents come in all varieties. There most certainly were independents who in fact did not know the rules. In New York, the rules were overly and egregiously confusing. Registration deadline to vote was March 25th, but the deadline to switch your party affiliation was October 9th. Reconcile those dates in your head. Now memorize them. Now have a full and demanding life and recite them back to me in a week.
“But why register as independent?” you ask. Well, who knows. It’s pure conjecture, isn’t it. One can question their motivations all day long, but don’t question that they had their reasons. I’m willing to bet anyone reading this has met at least two categories of sufficiently motivated independents. The first, I call “proud independents” — those with either a fondness for centric politics or a disdain for our divisive and dysfunctional two-party system. You can’t blame them. The second shields themselves from politics with the “independent” label — out of either anxiety, or a desire for peace and harmony. After avoiding enough political water-cooler talk by excusing yourself as an independent over the years, one likely starts identifying as such. You can’t blame them either.
So without questioning the motives of 3.2 million New Yorkers, let’s talk about why they wouldn’t be given the chance to weigh in on the narrowing down of our presidential contenders. The only answer is the obvious one. Closed primaries protect the establishment. They protect the powers that be — the party insiders. They exist for no other reason than to concentrate and maintain power and control.
You just can’t argue that point. That’s what they’re there for.
On a purely simplistic level, this is how I think voting should work: if a candidate is running for President (the only nationally elected official in the land), all citizens in every state in this country should be able say who they want.
Unfortunately, that’s not the way it works. The schedule of primaries, stretched out over six and a half months, dwindles the candidates, often to the point where voters in the states at the back of the train have no say in the nominee of either party. This may actually be the first year in a long time where every state actually has a say in the process — but only to a point (O’Malley supporters, or Rubio supporters, for instance are SOL). Then there’s the sticky matter of who can actually vote in those primaries speckled along that calendar. Unfortunately, the United States does not have a united method of conducting this affair.
11 states have strictly closed primaries, 11 have open primaries, and the rest have some variation of a hybrid system known as semi-closed primary or hold caucuses.
After last Tuesdays contest, I read articles in the New Yorker and elsewhere describing how I shouldn’t be upset about weird primary rules, that the political parties in this country are simply that — parties — private parties, with private rules. They’re not the government, and they’re not beholden to any government rules or regulations. They can do whatever they want. And while there may be some historical truth to that, I gotta say, it certainly feels like we’re trying to figure out who should be president, and that feels like its got a lot to do with government, and that government oughta have a lot to do with it. And the truth is, it does. It regulates, or at least used to try to, regulate fundraising, it makes constitutional amendments about who’s allowed to participate, and all that stuff that happens on election day, that’s funded by taxpayers! So yeah, government oughta have a pretty damn big say in how it works. Which means… we, the people, oughta have a damn big say in how it works.
Here’s how I say it should work. One big fix, probably not the only one, but a big one that would move us miles in the right direction: ALL OPEN PRIMARIES.
And I mean it. That means no caucuses. That’s right. Caucuses have favored Sanders in landslide victories, understandably to the chagrin and kvetching of Hillary supporters. Caucuses seem to favor the loudest, most devoted supporters with the most time on their hands. So toss ’em. I’m yet to even have someone explain fully how they work. In multiple states, there seem to be second and third rounds of caucusing that become even more confusing, are underreported in the media and where results can change. Toss ‘em! Toss any method of voting that inherently favors anybody! That sounds fair, dammit. And I’ll bet, not just to me, but to the millions of voters who would get the chance to vote, if we had ALL OPEN PRIMARIES.
You know what sounds not fair? Not getting to vote.
You know what makes people lose faith in the electoral process? Not getting to vote.
You know what makes people apathetic and uninvolved in their democracy? Feeling like they have no say in the matter, a.k.a. Not getting to vote.
So, if you want an involved public, you gotta open up the primaries! Especially Democrats who have a ridiculous pattern of low voter turnout in mid-term elections. You want to change that Democratic, big-wigs? Make people feel like they have a voice — like they have a vote. Give them the damn vote. Maybe, just maybe, they’ll come back and do it again. Tell them they can’t be a part of it and then court their vote every four years once you’ve picked their nominee for them? Hell, I’d be a cynic too. I’d tell you to go shop your wares somewhere else.
I’m still for Bernie. I still think it can happen. And I’m going to fight for it. But when this election’s over, no matter what happens, one thing will be really clear. Our electoral process has got to change! And it’s up to us. We have to demand it. Whoever wins this thing is not going to change it for us. Why would they? It got them elected. Even if Bernie gets elected, trust me, its not going to be high on his list. He’ll have a hefty agenda to pursue, and if we want this changed, we have to remember this rage we’re all feeling about this circus. Hillary supporters have to remember how perplexed and dismayed they were to hear that Bernie won all those caucuses with 40 and 50 point margins, and they’ll have to admit that super-delegates are the dumbest, most undemocratic bullshit on the planet. Bernie supporters, you’ll have to admit that the loudest supporters shouldn’t drown out the rest, and you’ll have to remember the pain of loss that was New York, and Arizona — places where the outcome could have been different. We all have to remember this frustration, this disillusionment, and direct that energy toward the institution. We have to make our parties change. We have to demand a uniform federal election process, and if our institutions won’t change, if our parties won’t change, if they won’t help us, then we have to dismantle them from the inside out. We need to vote people out, or run for office ourselves, until we own the parties, or we need to make new ones. But we need to change… everything. We need to make democracy work the way we know it should in our hearts. Not the way some history book tells us it works because that’s the way it worked when we were kids, or our parents or grandparents were kids, or when delegates had to deliver news to the convention on horseback, from a time when only land-owning men could vote. We can change this stuff. This stuff does change. This is not in the constitution. These rules were made up, and changed, by politicians, in different times, under different circumstances. We live now. This our land. We have to own it.
Let’s start with ALL OPEN PRIMARIES. Let people vote!
