The Primary Solution

To prepare for my podcast with Unite America founder, Nick Troiano, which dropped on Tuesday, I read an advance copy of Nick’s new book, The Primary Solution. As I mentioned the other day, this is a well written and important book and I encourage all of you to check it out. 

You have to have been hiding under quite some rock not to see that there’s something seriously wrong with our democracy these days. For several decades now, politics has devolved further and further in the wrong direction. It’s not just a matter of the extreme polarization of politics—although that’s a serious problem in and of itself—it’s also about corruption, ineptitude, and the degradation of the rule of law. Our political dialogue has become so dumbed down it borders on the absurd most days. And we have such extreme polarization that not only can we not get anything done but we’re electing these caricature-like individuals with increasing frequency. This isn’t “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” but rather something out of a South Park episode, except it isn’t funny because it’s real.

Things have gotten so bad already that we cannot get anything meaningful done even on our most consequential issues—i.e. things like Immigration, the Federal Budget, Entitlements, and now even National Security. And when we do actually make progress, votes are made almost 100% on party lines.

Recently, and perhaps most disturbingly, we’ve seen the rise of election denial. How can you have a functioning democracy when whoever loses cries foul and starts clamoring to overturn the election? Our problems here are huge and obvious. Why aren’t we panicking? 

America is the most important and powerful democratic power ever and the continued degradation of our politics in the direction of theatre is one of the most pressing problems in the world. What happens here matters a ton from a geopolitical and historical perspective.

What, then, should we do?

A big part of the problem is that the answer is not all that obvious. Ultimately, this is a very complex problem, and as Troiano points out in the book, there are multiple ideas on the table:

• Passing a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United

• Enacting congressional and Supreme Court term limits

• The Primary Solution

• Reforming the Senate filibuster

• Expanding the size of the House

• Making Election Day a national holiday

• Abolishing the Electoral College

• Creating a system of public campaign financing

• Establishing proportional representation

   

While there’s a good case for pursuing all of these reforms, Troiano and his colleagues and supporters at Unite America, are convinced that addressing primary elections is the key. Why? I think the hypothesis here is that when you really step back and analyze the situation you see that this is a massive people problem. We’ve just got too many of the wrong people in office. Fortunately, since we live in a democracy, change is always only just one election away, right? 

Change the people who get elected; solve our problems. It’s an elegant solution really—simple and realistic. 

The primary system has failed us If we can just change the people who actually get elected, we can solve our problems. Will it work?

I think so!

Here are several convincing reasons why:

1. Primaries are an undeniable root cause of the political polarization problem in America. It’s not just a coincidence that “primary” has become a verb as well as a noun.

The fundamental problem is that primary elections in many states are legally structured in ways that disenfranchise large chunks of voters. Laws in many states prevent independent voters from voting at all and/or don’t allow Democratic party members to vote in Republican primaries and vice versa. As such voter turnout is often low in primaries—hovering at just over 20% of all eligible voters. Add to this our legacy of gerrymandering and the urban and rural divide (AKA economic segregation) and you get a situation where, according to Troiano’s estimates, just 8% of voters are responsible for electing 83% of Congress. 

In recent elections, the ideological extremes of both parties have increasingly used this statistical reality to their advantage. By “primarying” candidates who don’t sufficiently toe the party line, fringe elements have grown to wield and abuse disproportionate power to the extreme detriment of progress and compromise. 

2. Primary reform is a practical solution with demonstrated political momentum. Primary reforms have already passed in several states including Louisiana, Alaska, California, Washington, and Nebraska.

In other words, primary reform is a strategy that’s actually already working, unlike many of the ideas on our list above, which seem permanently stuck in the mud. 

2. Finally, and most importantly, in the states where primary reforms have been passed the results have been compelling. 

In my view, what happened in Alaska—the state responsible for that whole Sarah Palin debacle—proves the case. After Unite America was successful in helping to get comprehensive primary reform passed in 2019, Alaska has not only seen higher voter turnout, more political engagement, and far fewer uncontested elections but also, and more importantly, has been electing candidates that actually represent the will of the people. As a result, there’s a new spirit of compromise in Alaskan politics and candidates from both sides of the aisle have benefited. The real beneficiaries here though are the people of Alaska.  Sounds like progress to me.

Troiano’s mission is to push for primary election reforms on a state-by-state basis that are consistent with two guiding principles:

1. All eligible voters should have the freedom to vote for any candidate in every election &

2. A candidate must earn a majority of the vote to win

While there’s some flexibility in the practical application of these reforms, what they are ultimately pushing for are completely open, non-partisan primaries, ideally with ranked choice voting and instant runoffs. Note: I’m going to leave the discussion of ranked choice voting and instant runoffs for a future discussion but the summary here is that they are not as complicated as people think and they would ensure that only candidates with a majority of the vote can win.

There’s a ton of work to be done. Election laws vary widely by state:

But with record-high voter dissatisfaction and the rapidly growing base of independents (by some estimates a majority of voters now), it’s not hard to see how this could all change pretty quickly. 

It's easy to forget that election laws are not static or set in stone. They change all the time and have been doing so since the very start of our history. The primary system itself was initially the product of a reform movement aimed at solving the problem of party machines and corrupt boss politics. Basically, in the old pre-primary days, powerful party bosses were able to completely control who ended up on the ballot. The primary, governed and funded by the state itself, was a way to give back control of the nominating process to the people. And this process worked quite well for about 100 years but, with the advent of the Internet and other powerful new economy technologies, they have clearly stopped functioning as intended. It’s time for change.

Look, it’s probably pretty obvious by now that I am a big supporter of Troiano, Unite America, and the primary reform movement. I believe this is a legitimate, practical, and realistic pathway to meaningful progress in our great democratic experiment. By changing the incentive structure of primary elections, which historically have served the nominating function, we can begin to elect candidates that represent the true will of the majority rather than the narrow interests of the fringe. This could change things in American politics rather quickly. Please check out the book and consider supporting Unite America and the other groups pushing for this much-needed change.

Ps. 

100 fascinating ideas about our future

2 pillars for a meaningful life

Entropy and business opportunity

Like what you’re reading? Join us on our socials for more content throughout the week. 🙏 Thank you!