National campaign to reduce polarization forces states to abandon party primaries

DENVER — A national campaign is backing ballot measures in six states to end party primaries, seeking to lower the temperature in a polarized country by eliminating a process that gives the most active members of both major parties a huge role in choosing the nation’s leaders.

A $70 million effort to replace traditional primaries with either nonpartisan or ranked choice voting is run by Unite America, a Denver-based organization dedicated to depolarizing the country.

“People are losing faith in democracy itself,” said Kent Thiry, co-chair of the group and former CEO of kidney dialysis company DaVita Inc., during a debate in Denver over the initiative on the Colorado ballot.

Nick Troiano, executive director of Unite America, said the goal is to end a system in which 85% of congressional seats are actually filled in party primaries because districts are so heavily Democratic or Republican that whoever wins the respective primaries , victory in November is virtually guaranteed.

Troiano said the Republican lawmakers who voted to overturn the 2020 election after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol almost all represented uncompetitive districts and had to answer only to their party’s voters.

Supporters are encouraged by the scope of the campaign.

“The presidential election overshadowed it, but this is the most important year for this kind of structural reform that I can remember,” said Edward Foley, a law professor at Ohio State University.

But some skeptics argue that changing the structure of primaries won’t make much of a difference in polarization, given that much of the country lives in either predominantly Democratic or predominantly Republican communities and will naturally elect people who fall on those ideological extremes.

“It appears to complicate the political situation, weaken political parties, and make it unclear what problem they are solving,” said Lee Drutman of the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C.

The voting measures include proposals to move to ranked-choice voting in reliably Democratic Colorado, evenly divided Nevada and two reliably Republican states where a sharp shift to the right among GOP primary voters has left traditional Republicans in the lurch – Idaho and South Dakota.

Both the swing state of Arizona and conservative Montana have measures to switch from partisan primaries to nonpartisan ones. In deep blue Oregon, the initiative would allow parties to still hold their own primaries but would require them to use ranked-choice voting in certain state and federal elections.

The ballot initiatives involve an unusual number of ballot measures that will appear on state ballots in November.

Eight states will consider conservative measures prohibit non-citizens from votingwhich is already illegal under federal law. Connecticut voters will decide whether to allow anyone in their state to vote by mail, and in Ohio whether to have non-partisan commission draw the legislative lines of your state.

The biggest change in US elections may be the wider adoption of ranked-choice voting. It requires each voter to rank candidates in order of preference. If someone doesn’t win a majority, the candidate with the lowest score is eliminated and that politician’s votes are redistributed to whoever his voters chose second. This continues until one candidate receives more than 50% of the votes.

Ranked-choice voting is a more complex way of conducting elections that is touted as a way to produce winners who better represent the entire electorate. This process is used in two states, Alaska and Maine, and in several cities, such as New York and San Francisco.

This allowed Democrat Rep. Mary Peltolato win the race for Alaska one seat in Congress in 2022, even though the governor and GOP state senator also won re-election. This result angered many Republican activists, who then pushed for the trial to be banned in Republican-controlled states such as Florida and Tennessee. Now, even as other states consider adopting ranked-choice voting, Alaska voters will consider voting to cancel This.

Critics say the campaign to attack party primaries is an attempt to drown out the voices of ideologically committed voters.

“This is an attempt to bring back centrism,” Jason Lupo, a conservative political strategist in Colorado who opposes the measure in that state, said during a recent debate in Denver. “This is a way to eliminate progressives; it’s a way to eliminate conservatives.”

Critics also warn that the proposed changes come as Conservatives have become more distrustful of electoral processes since Trump’s lies about the fraud that cost him victory in the 2020 election.

“It really makes elections difficult, and that in turn makes elections difficult to trust,” Trent England, founder of the conservative group Save Our States, said during a recent debate over the ballot measure in Idaho. “Do we really think now is the time to do this?”

Still, proponents of ballot measures say something needs to change.

Chuck Coughlin, a veteran Republican strategist from Arizona who used to work for the senator. John McCainin 2022, wanted to support a Democrat running for Congress in one primary and an incumbent Republican running for county supervisor in another. But he was only allowed to vote in one primary in a state where the GOP swung sharply to the right.

“I was like, ‘I can’t do this anymore,'” Coughlin said after 2022, when every candidate he worked for lost the Republican primary and GOP candidates for governor, attorney general and secretary of state lost to Democrats in 2022 year. November because they were too radical for the state’s evenly divided electorate. “I can’t just hold elections with the fringe.”

Coughlin was thrilled to receive help from Unite America, which donated $5 million to his Arizona initiative earlier this month.

The group was founded in 2013 to promote independent political forces. Troiano, who ran unsuccessfully as an independent candidate for a Pennsylvania congressional seat, arrived to fill it three years later. He helped steer it toward greater investment in structural changes to democracy, such as nonpartisan redistricting.

Unite America has some wealthy backers, such as board members Catherine Murdoch, the media mogul’s daughter-in-law. Rupert Murdochand Kenneth Griffin, founder of hedge fund Citadel. His resources have become a target for opponents of the ballot measures, who argue that ranked-choice voting and other changes to party primaries will mainly help candidates with deep pockets win elections.

Opponents of these measures focus on funding as a reason to oppose the transition.

“I want the wrong people to write my election law,” said Sean Hinga, a labor leader leading opposition to Colorado’s election bill.

___

Boone reported from Boise, Idaho. Associated Press writers Becky Bohrer in Juneau, Alaska, and Claire Rush in Portland, Oregon, contributed to this report.