That primary ballot on your desk probably matters more than the general election
When we start to care more about the rules than who wins
Dear Friends,
Did you all watch the NBA All-Star game? Yeah, me neither. One team scored 211 points and the other team 186 points, and really, who cares?
The major sports outlets, the handful that still exist, focused their coverage on how to fix it. Charlie Munger loved to say, “Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome.” The writers at the New York Times’ The Athletic have some entertaining ideas for new incentives.
Look at Major League Baseball … they changed the rules and thus changed the incentives:
After tweaking a handful of rules, Major League Baseball has more TV viewers, better ratings, and a 10% increase in attendance. (The first increase in attendance since 2007!)
What I’m trying to say is, when the game is broken for long enough, people start to care about changing the rules more than who wins. We’ve clearly reached that point with the NBA All-Star Game. But you can probably guess that this week’s newsletter is not about basketball or baseball. It’s about democracy. What if we could tweak the rules of elections to get better candidates, more voters, and a better government?
As I write this, I’ve got my Alameda County primary ballot staring at me, totally blank. Since I registered as a Democrat, I can only vote for Democratic Party presidential candidates.1 Fortunately, California is one of four states where congressional and state primaries are nonpartisan and candidates need at least 50% of the vote to win. Why shouldn’t I be allowed to vote for my preferred candidate? And shouldn’t elected officials have to win at least half of the votes in a runoff election to represent their constituencies?
Nick Troiano tells Larry Lessig that over 70% of voters say they should be able to vote for any candidate regardless of party and that those candidates should have to win a majority of votes. 70% of respondents thought this was already the case. But it’s only true in four states:
There are 435 seats in the US House. And 359 of those 435 seats are in so-called “safe seat” districts where one party is so heavily favored that whoever wins the primary election is guaranteed to win the general election. But how many people vote for House Representatives in primary elections? Just 20 million people out of 257 million voting-age Americans. This means that 8% of voters decide 83% of the House of Representatives. It’s absurd.
Unless you live in Michigan, Georgia, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, or Nevada, your vote for president this year (depressingly) probably doesn’t matter. And wherever you live, your primary ballot will likely matter more than your general election ballot. (Here’s a list of state primaries by date.)
But it doesn’t have to be this way. Nick Troiano leads Unite America, which advocates for three state-based solutions so that primary candidates aren’t decided by the most extreme voters on both the left and right:
Nonpartisan primaries are open to all voters
Instant runoffs so that elected officials must win a majority of votes
Independent redistricting to end partisan gerrymandering
It’s worth listening to Lessig’s conversation with Troiano in full to hear how party primaries came about in the early 1900s to solve some problems while creating many others.2 They also discuss how a new nonpartisan primary and instant runoff in Alaska favored centrist Democrat and Republican candidates rather than extreme candidates like Sarah Palin.3
No one wants to watch an All-Star game where one team scores over 200 points and there is no defense. The rules need to change. Similarly, no one wants to live in a country where 83% of House lawmakers are chosen by 8% of the country. It’s more fun to be a fan than a referee, but once the game is broken, it’s time to fix the rules.
Next week: an update on my dream vintage VW bus. In the meantime, have a lovely weekend,
David
PS: I kinda wanted to do this comparative politics thing comparing how elections work in Mexico versus the US, and why Mexico is likely to (eventually) pass a constitutional reform to change lower house elections and the Supreme Court. But I figured that is probably of interest to like 3 other people Tell me if I’m wrong!
Actually, I learned today that I could have registered as “No Party Preference,” which would have allowed me to vote for any Democratic, Libertarian, or Independent presidential candidate. But not for a Republican or Green Party candidate … I would have had to change my party registration, which apparently I can still do.
If you can’t get enough podcast content about the history of primaries, the latest Ezra Klein episode is good too.
Troiano recognizes that these three reforms are not a panacea or silver bullet and need to be matched with other reforms, including campaign finance, expanding voter access, and supporting independent, local media.
You're not wrong...jk...kinda.
SO many rules need to change. I've been particularly horrified reading about all of the state-level changes silently being slipped onto ballots to set the stage to further limit women's bodily autonomy, even as we know that the majority oppose them. And when politicians are able to simply change the boundaries of who votes where to maintain power... it just feels like the whole thing is rigged.
I'd be interested in the US-Mexico analysis! 🙋🏼♀️