The primary system was intended to democratize political parties, replacing "smoke-filled rooms" with democratic elections to select each party's candidate. But primaries are not working.
In 2016, Donald Trump won the Republican nomination with minority support—only 45 percent of Republican primary voters voted for Trump. But his opponents were split. Four years later, the Democratic primaries were headed the same way. Bernie Sanders, also a minority candidate, was leading the pack while the moderate candidates—Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, and Mike Bloomberg—split the majority of voters.
It was only Buttigieg and Klobuchar's 11th-hour decision to end their campaigns the night before Super Tuesday that allowed more moderate voters to coalesce around Joe Biden. Were it not for their high-minded act, Trump and Sanders would have faced off in November 2020, with the primary system delivering a choice between a hard-right and a hard-left candidate. It was a choice few Americans wanted and one that hardly reflected the actual politics of most voters.
We may be headed there again. As long as his opponents are split, Trump's solid, but minority, base can propel him to win primary after primary and still lose the majority vote. Many Republicans know it, and it binds them together. A crowded field of Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Chris Christie, and Chris Sununu could easily deliver Trump the Republican Party's nomination with a minority vote.
The parties can solve that problem. There are a number of reforms open to them, and there is still time.
The first is the simplest: Republicans can adopt the system used by the Democratic Party to reward delegates based on the proportion of their votes. So, if Trump wins 40 percent of the votes in a primary, he gets 40 percent of the delegates. This would mean a brokered convention, and Trump could still win, but it would be a much better outcome than awarding him all the delegates of the states in which he wins primaries, whereby his 40 percent of the votes could wrap up a majority of the delegates.
This is the least bad option, and the easiest for the Republican Party to adopt. But there are better reforms to consider.
The best way to avoid minority candidates sweeping the primaries is for both parties to embrace ranked choice voting (RCV). This elegant solution, adopted in the likes of Maine and New York City and popular in other countries like Australia, allows voters to rank their candidates. Though often difficult to explain, RCV systems are really quite simple.
Consider nine students on a road trip. They vote on where to have lunch: Four want McDonald's, but the other five are vegetarians. They split their votes between Sweetgreen and Panera Bread. If America's primary voting system were in place, the nine students would be eating at McDonald's, disappointing five of them (the majority). But, if they ranked their votes, the Panera and Sweetgreen voters would combine on the second round, and the nine would eat in a restaurant that the majority actually favored.
Anyone who has voted in a workplace breakout meeting using a points system has experienced RCV. If adopted for the U.S. primary system, it would mean the candidate most voters want to be their party's presidential nominee would win their party's primary. Imagine that!
RCV has another benefit: It discourages negative campaigning, which most Americans despise. When voters choose their first-, second-, and third-choice candidates, smart politicians avoid disparaging their opponents, lest they turn off the voters who like their opponents second- or third-best.
By embracing reforms like RCV, American politics can move toward the center at a time when primaries turbo-charge polarization. Reform rewards comity, problem solving, and ultimately good public policy. Republicans may be opposed to RCV now, but political expediency has a way of changing minds.
New York saw the light. One decade ago, the city's voters elected Mayor Bill de Blasio, who won the Democratic primary in a crowded field of candidates with just over 40 percent of the vote. Because the city leans Democrat, the winner of that primary is likely to win the general election, and de Blasio did. But he was deeply unpopular, and New York corrected its mistake with RCV.
With a stroke of the pen, both parties can make a profound difference for American democracy by updating the current voting system. To avoid catastrophe in 2024, it's time for Americans to vote in a truly democratic system.
The clock is ticking on basic, essential reform. Democracy cannot afford to wait.
Marc A. Feigen is co-chair of Every Vote Counts' executive board.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
