NPR: “In a time of national division, polarizing primaries are part of the problem”

Read an edited excerpt from a recent NPR article written by Ron Elving about our unrepresentative, polarizing election system and why we should work to reform it:

“It is said the best medicine for what ails democracy is more democracy. But what does more democracy mean? If it just means more of the kind of politics we have now then it hardly offers a remedy.

We need new mechanisms to reform, if not replace, the kinds of democratic processes we have. And efforts to find better processes are underway around the country, starting with the party primary system, which is a big reason the extremes tend to pull the parties further apart.

Primary voting is almost by definition dominated by activists, who tend to be more ideological. More moderate candidates who might represent the majority of citizens in a state or a district are at a disadvantage.

We have had primary elections to select nominees for general elections at the local, state and federal level for more than a century. They began as an alternative to having party bosses at each level simply name the candidates they wanted.

As the system has evolved, however, primaries have come to be dominated by ideological partisans who please the more agenda-driven elements in either party who are the most likely to participate in primaries.

There is comparatively little incentive to reach out to voters who might fall somewhere between the two parties. And that is especially true as computer-assisted gerrymandering creates more districts that are "safe" for one party or the other in November elections.

That is increasingly problematic as fewer Americans identify with either major party. At the end of 2021, Gallup found 42% of Americans identified as independents – with 29% identifying as Democrats and 27% as Republicans. Roughly half the states that have registration by party now have more people registering as independents than as Democrats or Republicans. Gallup has also found the percentage of Americans favoring creation of a new major party has risen above 60% for the first time.

Rather than respond to this by seeking common ground, the parties have continued to move further away from each other. Stanford political scientist Adam Bonica, among others, has charted this trend across the past four decades, demonstrating how the parties' nominees for Congress have become more ideological and further apart. While the political center was inhabited by a substantial fraction of nominees in both parties in 1980, it is almost entirely deserted today.”

Read the full story from NPR here.

Show Me Integrity is working with business and civic leaders, grassroots groups, and coalitions across the state to implement a more representative and less divisive election system in Missouri that will work to combat this “primary problem” we see in our politics today. Stay tuned for more details.