How Do You Solve A Problem Like Primaries?

Edward B. Foley, professor and director of the election law program at Ohio State, and ...

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Edward B. Foley, professor and director of the election law program at Ohio State, and Nick Troiano, executive director of Unite America, join Sarah for a conversation about reforming primaries. What does primary reform look like? Their conversation covers political science, history, and math. That’s right math. Can math save democracy?

Show Notes:

–Requiring Majority Winners for Congressional Elections

–Foley in the Washington Post: “How our system of primary elections could destroy democracy”

–The Sweep: “A Focus on the Problem with Primaries”

–Unite America: “America Has a Primary Problem”

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Comments (111)
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  1. Avatar photo
    Mandy

    This episode is freaking AWESOME, and I loved every delicious second of it. These ideas and the reformers fighting for them are what keep me from giving up on our democratic process, and I don’t think that modernization has to threaten our institutions if it’s carried out thoughtfully. Even I’m not naive enough to believe that there won’t be some trial and error involved, but as the guests pointed out, even imperfect progress on these reforms will be far better than the status quo. Count me in on all of it. I was so excited listening to Sarah nerd out with these guys as I walked my dog last night that my neighbors probably heard me yelling “yes…yes…oh hell yes” every time they made a great point. Thank you so much for this excellent episode!

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    Ben Connelly

    I have to admit, I was looking forward to this interview and I found it disappointing. First of all, while I typically think you do a good job of being a “hard but fair” interviewer, Sarah, at a couple points in the interview I thought you said things that were overly simplistic. If I were fact-checking the Rubicon comment, I’d say, “Needs (a lot of) Context.” Also, what was the point of bringing up Elon Musk’s tweet? I think you misstated the point (it was about him, not about the positions of the two parties relative to each other). But if we shouldn’t care about it, why bring it up at all? If it’s needless to say, don’t say it.

    I appreciated the point about campaign finance and about how we need to change who runs not who wins. My only pushback would be that Madison designed a system that could function even when the wrong people ended up in power and to the extent that we’ve gotten away from that, we’ve made things worse. To that point, one of the guests admitted that as we introduced more “direct democracy” into the system, we got these terrible primaries etc. and then went on to say that while the Madisonian system worked in the past, maybe we needed to get away from it even more in hope of solving the problems we created for ourselves. That smacks of unseriousness to me and I wish you’d have a serious (ie not Noah Feldman) constitutional scholar on this podcast or AO. Preferably a Madisonian and/or a Straussian.

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    Chad Kirvan

    Given the mileage placed on his spoon and high chair regarding primary reform, how difficult was it to keep Jonah from bursting into the podcast like the Kool-aid man?

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    Peter S.

    I just don't understand how you can get through a pretty solid explanation of "round robin" vote counting without even once mentioning that it is properly known as Condorcet and was invented hundreds of years ago. Did the professor somehow ... just not know this? He kinda talked like he thought the whole scheme was his idea. How do you get even 6 inches deep into election nerdery without coming across Condorcet systems?

    I will at least give them credit for puncturing the myth that ranked choice is a synonym for instant runoff. That one is super annoying, since IRV is the second worst voting system.

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  5. Mathew A

    It seems to me that primaries and small dollar donations are something that intuitively sounds good. More democracy good, less influence of the rich elite good.

    Yet what happened was decidedly bad. Primaries and small dollar donations seem to respond to populist passions more than good policy.

    The founders repeated warnings and fears about mob rule spring to mind.


    However, on the other hand, our elite institutions seem to have by and large been taken over by woke nonsense. So I don't see how you turn to them for guidance.


    IMHO, voting should be made harder not easier. It's not just a right but a responsibility. You should have to pass a basic test on constitutional law and economics to vote.

    Here's a hint, if you don't understand that the 1st amendment protects speech you don't like (including hate speech) you won't pass.

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    Will Roberts

    If we truly want representation amend the constitution to create another house of Congress where people are randomly selected from the population to legislate. There would be certain minimum requirements and we can debate what those are but I think it is a faulty assumption that however we run a popularity contest we won't elect mostly narcissistic people who are out for themselves. Having a people's house that is randomly selected might actually teach people that legislating is no cake walk. And they can go back to their communities and tell people to be more patient and stop complaining. They have been to Rome and it isn't built in a day

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    Rick Henderson

    I hadn’t thought about the “taxpayer-funded primary” distortion until this podcast, so, well done! I’m not sure how to end the practice unless it’s done state-by-state. Parties would be welcome to hold primaries at their expense and recommend nominees, but all candidates who met ballot access requirements could take their case to all voters. Whether a state chooses RCV or first past the post or whatever can be handled in the laboratories.

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    George.Skinner

    One thing that I thought was missed in this discussion: one of the most distorting effects on primaries is the fact that they're low turn-out elections that give the most motivated people an advantage. Typical turn-out seems to be around 20%, with the highest turn-out anywhere still less than 50% of eligible voters. If you could increase participation in these elections, you'd also dilute the effect of the highly motivated extremists. What about switching to an all mail ballot voting system, or finally cracking the challenge of telephone/internet voting?

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    MikeyDubs

    All of the speakers seemed to understand the game theory that changing the voting rules will change candidate behavior, but only one of them seemed to appreciate the game theory that the incumbents in office must see any change they propose as being in their own interest. If you want to propose a change that goes against the self interest of the incumbents in the US Congress or the State Legislatures, the only way to do it is with a state referendum.

    That said, it is possible to imagine persuading state legislators that beneficial changes would be in their interest. In Florida, most independent voters lean Republican. Someone could persuade the Republican legislature that it would be in the Republican Party's interest to open primaries up to these voters, at least in some situations. Currently, Florida runs a nonpartisan open primary if and only if all of the candidates have the same party affiliation. That's a constitutional requirement that the voters will never overturn. A candidate may file to run for a seat expecting that to be the case. But then another candidate may persuade a person to file to run under false pretenses, running with no party or other party affiliation, such that what was supposed to be a nonpartisan open primary becomes a closed partisan primary. So today, no one in Florida actually has any control over whether a primary will be closed or open, and it can't be predicted until all papers are filed. Party leaders may see it as being to their advantage if the law said they were able to choose which primaries would be open or closed, and laws giving them that choice could be written fairly easily.

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  10. Chris Hellings

    Election math nerd here. Thanks so much for this conversation! Both guests were really good, and Sarah was great as always. Some sort of Ranked Choice Voting is critical for elections like our primaries, where there are more than two candidates, whether it is Instant Runoff Voting or Round Robin Tournament Voting or other similar systems, any of which is superior to our current Plurality Voting system.

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