A Message to MA Political Leaders: More Choice Is Better for the State, the Nation, and Your Party

Baystate voters will decide this November whether to reform the state’s primary election system, now that a last-ditch challenge by Democratic insiders has failed in court. That’s good news: voters should be in the driver’s seat of our democracy, and the parties should get on board with the greater competition and accountability that reform will create.

The initiative, called the All-Party Primary (APP), is designed to fix structural flaws that give Massachusetts the least competitive elections in the nation. In most races, the party primaries, which most voters skip, decide who wins. That means officeholders reflect the preferences of the narrow primary electorate, not all voters. Our primaries put the parties first, not the voters, who can’t choose among all candidates, and rarely see meaningful competition.

If the familiar seems good enough to you, consider this: party primaries provide a key weapon for Donald Trump to punish opponents and dominate the Republican Party. Both sides exploit the current system to “primary” officeholders who step out of line, stifling the problem-solving and compromise-making our country needs.

The All-Party Primary changes the equation through a new first-round election that is open to all candidates and all voters. The two top finishers, regardless of party, advance to the general election. This change makes the general election the rightful focus, creates more competition in both rounds, and expands accountability to the full electorate. If Massachusetts voters want, the system can easily accommodate ranked choice voting through a future ballot measure.

Research in states that use versions of this system (Alaska, California, Louisiana, Nebraska, and Washington) finds more competitive elections, more accountability, and less polarization. And from a political party perspective, these benefits came with little political cost, since in each state the same party stayed in the majority after adoption of the reform. What changes instead is how parties are incentivized, both on the campaign trail and in office.

According to recent polling from Emerson College, majorities of Democratic and unaffiliated voters in Massachusetts plan to vote yes, along with a significant plurality of Republicans. The support makes sense, since Massachusetts voters already use a similar system for local offices like mayor and municipal elections.

Nevertheless, insiders on both sides oppose the reform. Part of the reason is a way of thinking about reform that prioritizes the political over the structural. Assumptions about who will benefit from new rules usually dominate the discussion, not why the status quo needs fixing.

Missing the structural forest for the political trees can cause real damage, as a sobering example of failed Electoral College reform illustrates. In the 1960s and 70s, Congress nearly passed an amendment for direct election of the president, before losing out to diehard southern Democrats. Surprisingly, opponents of reform also included leading civil rights champions of the day.

They argued for keeping the Electoral College in order to protect the status of Black voters as “a critical group of swing voters” sought by both parties in northern battleground states like New York and Illinois (as documented by scholar Alex Keyssar). Of course, those states soon became reliably Democrat, and that “critical swing status” disappeared. But the Electoral College remained unchanged — and soon elected popular-vote-loser Donald Trump as President.

This example is worth raising because some Democratic Party insiders and progressive leaders seem to be making a similar political miscalculation in their opposition to All-Party Primaries, albeit on a smaller scale.

They argue that billionaires and other wealthy campaign donors will have greater influence under APP than the current system, but research finds the opposite to be true. Ideological PACs that cater to the wealthiest and most extreme voices have greater impact in states with the current party primary system. Opponents also argue that APP will disadvantage women and people of color, but here too researchers draw the opposite conclusion. Women candidates perform better in All-Party Primaries. And by reducing re-election rates, APP opens more opportunities for minorities and women to advance in politics.

On their side of the aisle, Republican leaders oppose APP because in some solidly Democratic districts, there could be no Republican candidate in the general election. But arguably, the GOP needs just such pressure, and the demands of robust competition at the primary level, to grow beyond its current paltry support in the state.

I’m proud to support the APP initiative, which is led by the Coalition for Healthy Democracy and its founder Danielle Allen, and to have testified in support of APP in the state legislature. At Election Reformers Network, we believe in a voter-centric democracy where parties win or lose based on their leaders and their policies, not their control of the rules. APP fits that vision perfectly.

Reforming our primary elections will inject more choices and more competition into our elections — a change that is better for everyone: voters and parties, our state and the nation. Massachusetts political parties don’t need to narrow the electorate and avoid the voters — they just need to win voters over. Hopefully, party leaders, will see the forest for the trees and embrace this much-needed reform.