The average U.S. House district encompasses about 590,000 voting-age people. How many of them would you expect to vote for their representative in Congress? Half? Quarter?
In 2020, the representative of Georgia's 14th congressional district was effectively elected by 43,813 people who voted for the winner of the Republican primary – just 8% of eligible voters. In 2018, the representative of New York's 14th District was elected by 16,898 people who voted for the winner of the Democratic primary – just 5% of eligible voters. In these districts, one deep red and one deep blue, the dominant party's primaries were the only elections that mattered.
Since their initial victories with those slim totals, Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (DY) have significantly affected the priorities and direction of their parties, pushing them toward ideological extremes. And both MTG and AOC are beneficiaries of the predominant partisan primary system, which heavily favors candidates who can appeal to a puny but passionate base in a lopsided district.
Nonpartisan primaries like the one in California on Tuesday are a rare exception, one that can show us the path toward national political reform.
Greene and Ocasio-Cortez are far from alone. A Unite America investigation found that only 8% of voters Nationally, he cast votes in primaries that determined 83% of House races.
As? First, 83% of constituencies, such as AOC and MTG, are considered “safe” for one party or another. While some of this has to do with gerrymandering, most districts are not competitive due to the growing partisan divide between urban areas (which lean Democratic) and rural areas (which lean Republican). .
You might think we have a two-party system in the United States, but in most of the country, we actually have two one-party systems. In these places, primaries are the only important elections.
Second, very few voters participate in primaries. That's because 22 states prevent independents from voting in primaries, according to a recent report by the Unite America Institute, disenfranchising 23.5 million registered independents. And this problem is only getting worse: the share of unregistered voters in a major political party has increased by almost 20% since 2010.
Primaries not only determine the winners of most elections, but also give disproportionate power to small and marginal factions. The result: More of our elected officials are less representative of America and less willing to work with the other party to solve problems.
Most of us take for granted that primaries are an immutable feature of our politics that have always been with us. But they are not. California is now one of four states that avoid partisan congressional races.
The most powerful solution to the problems of partisan primaries is to simply abolish them. It is time for the next evolutionary phase of our electoral system to continue the tradition of periodic improvements since the founding of the nation.
The abolition of partisan primaries upholds two key principles: that all voters, regardless of party, should have the right to cast their vote for any candidate in any taxpayer-funded election, and that all candidates should obtain a majority of votes to be chosen. Reforming our primaries can give all voters an equal voice and hold all candidates to the same standard. Most importantly, it can reward, rather than punish, politicians for doing what we elect them to do.
The most common way to abolish partisan primaries so far is to replace them with nonpartisan primaries, often called “general primaries” or “jungle primaries.” In a nonpartisan primary, all voters participate in a single primary in which all candidates are listed on the ballot with their self-identified party affiliation. The top finishers advance to the general election regardless of party and compete for majority support.
The path to primary reform does not require federal legislation or an amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and it can have a transformative impact without occurring in all 50 states. In fact, I think it will dramatically improve the functioning of Congress if something like six more states abolish partisan primaries by 2026, bringing the total to 10. And voter-led campaigns in several states, including Colorado, Nevada, Idaho, Montana and South Dakota, could pass nonpartisan primaries with ballot initiatives this fall.
With 20 senators and a few dozen representatives freed from the political margins and able to form new coalitions to actually govern, I believe we would have the critical mass to begin addressing important challenges that today seem unsolvable.
A democracy controlled by extremes at the expense of the majority, offering division rather than solutions, cannot last indefinitely. And the self-reinforcing cycle of hyperpartisanship will not end on its own. We should judge proposals to change course not against perfection but rather against the status quo.
Abolishing partisan primaries is not a panacea. But California and others have demonstrated that it is a viable and effective means to begin reversing our increasingly poisonous polarization.
Nick Troiano is the author of “The main solution: rescue our democracy from the margins,” from which it is adapted, and the executive director of Unite America, a philanthropic venture fund that invests in nonpartisan electoral reforms.
