The adverse effects of primary elections

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Minnesota's participation in one of the worst features of American elections will come to a head Aug. 9. That's when small numbers of partisans will go to the polls in the primary to select the candidates who will appear on the November general election ballot.

While the rules and processes of primaries vary from state to state, Minnesota shares key features with most states, and all of them are detrimental to good politics and good policy.

First, primary elections are ignored by most voters. They typically are held when few people are paying attention to electoral politics. The vast majority of primaries nationally are held in the five nice-weather months of May through September, with more than 60%, including Minnesota's, coming during summer. People reasonably are distracted by leisure and outdoor activities.

Politics and political campaigns aren't top-of-mind for most people during the summer. Candidates in primaries encourage the lack of interest. In low-turnout elections — and primaries certainly qualify on that point — messaging is all about "narrowcasting." The goal is to target only the voters who are most likely to vote for a candidate, speak directly to them with the most provocative messages and do nothing to broaden the electoral base.

The people to whom nonparticipating voters defer mostly are those who tend to be the most intensely partisan. And that's the second negative feature of primaries. It's not just that they encourage candidates to take more extreme positions, primaries promote policy gridlock. The highly regarded Cook Report estimates that only 8% of congressional districts are competitive. Put another way, that means more than 9 of 10 seats in the U.S. House aren't won or lost in November contests between Democrats and Republicans. They are decided in primaries in which incumbents are challenged by members of their own parties, often by those staking out extreme positions on the right or left. Winning those races too often forces primary winners into the kind of campaign positions that make policy compromises impossible after the votes are counted.

Political scientist and author Lee Drutman, writing on the political website FiveThirtyEight, points out that when congressional districts were more competitive, "broad coalitions operated across what was more like a four-party system, with many liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats voting together while many conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats also voted together." The middle ground no longer is the winning ground.

There are solutions, and a good place to start is to go north to Alaska. In 2020, Alaska voters took two significant steps to improve electoral politics. Alaskans opened primaries beyond Democratic and Republican candidates. All candidates run in a single primary with the top four finishers, regardless of partisan affiliation, moving on to the general election.

Certainly, this approach brings its own set of challenges, not least of which is the crowded ballot. For little more than a $300 filing fee, candidates can get their name on the primary ballot for most statewide and federal offices. Nearly 20 candidates are competing to replace U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, for example, even as she tries to win re-election. That's an easily correctable flaw, however. A requirement that candidates file a petition with a reasonable number of signatures collected over a reasonable time would reflect at least a minimal amount of support and organization, likely culling the field of candidate wannabes.

The top four finishers in the Alaskan primary move on to the general election, which is conducted by ranked-choice voting, the same system used in Minneapolis, St. Paul and some other Minnesota municipalities, and in several jurisdictions around the country.

Ranked-choice voting simply gives voters the opportunity to cast positive votes for their most favored candidates, not defensive votes to prevent the most despised candidate from winning. The experience in Minnesota and elsewhere is that once voters gain experience with ranked choice, they view it favorably. Voters don't find it complicated, and it contributes to higher turnout.

Both Republicans and Democrats and, more important, their key constituencies, should embrace these reforms. Minnesota today is following in the footsteps of many other states that are witnessing more extremists from both the left and right target incumbents in primaries. Several Minnesota Republican legislators are being targeted — often successfully — by an extreme right-wing group. On the left, Fourth District U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum, a reliable liberal vote during her more than two decades in Congress, faces a primary challenger who is in the mold of Reps. Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib.

Winning a primary in which most voters are intensely partisan increasingly pushes candidates to the extremes of their parties before primary votes are even cast. That's especially true in Minnesota's Republican Party. GOP candidates seeking endorsement at the state convention must agree to abide by the delegates' decision and not go to the primary if they aren't endorsed at the convention. That means the choices of a small group of partisans voting in the primary is further limited by an even smaller group of partisans endorsing at the convention. One result: Only two people who have been endorsed by a state Republican convention have been elected governor in the last half century. Why would Republicans and their allies not support a more inclusive process?

Certainly, there are great policy differences between today's Republicans and Democrats. But most policymakers and their constituents agree that Minnesota and the nation cannot afford gridlock that makes the status quo the default position. It's hard to imagine any solutions advancing, though, in a world in which politicians are elected on far-right/left platforms in which "compromise" isn't just a dirty word, it's grounds for expulsion from the clubs of extremists.

Continuing down the current path of today's electoral process virtually assures our state and country will be diminished by policy inaction. It's long past time to turn the tide.