Want more competitive political races? Change the primary system.
Massachusetts, we have a problem. From school committee elections to statewide races, from state treasurer to Congress, not enough people are running for office. In a state once known for its heavyweight political bouts, serious challenges — any challenges — to incumbents have become vanishingly rare.
The majority of state legislators, both Democratic and Republican, will face no opponent in either next month’s primary or November’s general election, allowing them to waltz to reelection. Most other races, including for district attorney, governor’s council, and sheriff, look no better. Even among the state constitutional officers, where there’s usually been at least pro forma competition, the treasurer’s race this year is uncontested.
If the essence of democracy is the ability of voters to make choices on Election Day, then Massachusetts is falling badly short. Whether by design or by accident, the Commonwealth’s electoral system is suppressing voters the old-fashioned way: by depriving them of choices that would motivate them to show up in the first place. The lack of competition also means there’s no way for voters to hold officials accountable for their decisions — even if they wanted to.
How bad is the state’s political torpor? According to Ballotpedia, the Commonwealth’s elections were the least competitive in the entire United States in 2020, with 73 percent of races uncontested.
Alabama was next at 72 percent.
In New Hampshire, by comparison, the figure was 3 percent.
And before someone asks: it’s not because Massachusetts just loves its leaders much. The fact that there’s such a vast discrepancy with even a neighboring state suggests there are structural problems here that have turned elections into such uncompetitive affairs.
There’s no surefire way to entice more would-be candidates, but solving the problem of barren ballots must become a higher priority for the state that fancies itself an exemplar of democracy. In the past, this page has argued for reforms to weaken the advantages of incumbency, such as limitations on carried-over campaign war chests. The state could also reduce the number of signatures required to gain access to the ballot (state Senate candidates in Massachusetts need 300 signatures, and state House candidates need 150; in New Hampshire it’s 20 and 5 signatures, respectively, albeit in smaller districts). Moving up the primary would also have a beneficial impact.
But to really get more candidates in the mix, there’s a deeper, systemic problem that must be confronted: the state’s political parties. Neither the state’s Republican nor Democratic parties are doing a good job ensuring that races are contested. Based on their performance, they don’t deserve to keep their role as gatekeepers of the general election ballot. Abolishing party primaries or opening them up to all voters, as several other states have done, would give would-be candidates a clearer path to run for office and provide voters the choices they deserve.
Saying both parties helped create this mess isn’t to say both are equally to blame.
The prime culprit is the state’s Republican Party, which increasingly no longer even tries to contest races — much less with reality-based candidates. According to the Secretary of State’s office, the GOP has failed to put up a candidate in 21 of 40 state Senate races and 105 of 160 state House races. In other words, while it’s only August, the Democrats have already won the State House (barring an unprecedented number of GOP write-in campaigns).
But the dominant Democrats are part of the problem, too. Two of the three remaining GOP state senators will have no Democratic opponent. Among the meager 27 Republicans in the House, 17 face no primary general election opponent. The two parties may not technically have a nonaggression pact in
State House races, but it sometimes sure looks that way.
And the Democrats have managed to paper over their own internal differences, too often depriving their own voters of contested primaries that might force the party’s progressive and centrist factions to air their differences in the open. This year’s gubernatorial primary features exactly one active candidate, Attorney General Maura Healey.
Yes, there are alternative routes to the general election ballot — independent candidacies, third parties, write-in campaigns, etc. Those avenues have never been a viable source of credible candidates in the past in Massachusetts and there’s little reason to expect that to change.
It’s not just that party primaries aren’t generating enough candidates. They may be actively scaring people out of running in the first place by imposing on candidates the requirement to court party activists before they can even reach the general election stage. That might be just the way political parties like it — but what’s good for the parties isn’t the same as what’s good for the public.
One solution would be to change the rules to let everyone vote in party primaries. Right now, registered Democrats can vote only in Democratic primaries, Republicans can vote only in theirs, and unenrolled voters can pick one but not both. A completely open primary would let Republicans vote in Democratic primaries (and, theoretically, vice versa). Since winning Democratic primaries is typically tantamount to winning the election, an open primary would be a way of letting everyone in Massachusetts participate in those decisions.
A better solution would be to get rid of party primaries altogether. Several states, including California and Washington, have adopted top-two primaries in which all candidates, regardless of party, appear on the ballot together and everyone can vote. The top two finishers advance to a final vote. The two finalists are often a Democrat and a Republican, but in areas where one of the major parties is moribund, the system ensures there will still be competition; the finalists could also be a moderate and progressive Democrat, for instance, or a centrist Republican and Trump supporter.
The traditional argument in favor of top-two primaries is that they combat political polarization by removing the need for candidates to appeal to the extremes of their respective parties in order to win a primary. On that score, the evidence from other states is mixed, but there is some indication that top-two primaries have moderated partisanship. In a notable recent example, of the 10 Republican members of Congress who voted to impeach Donald Trump, the only ones who survived were those that represented states with nontraditional primaries.
Maybe more relevant to Massachusetts, though, is that in both states elections are far more competitive even though they are both heavily Democratic. According to Ballotpedia, only 12 percent of races in California and 14 percent of races in Washington were uncontested in 2020. (Reminder again: 73 percent of 2020 were uncontested in Massachusetts.)
The right to vote is fundamental, but when there’s only one candidate to vote for, that right is drained of its substance. The party primary system may have served the public interest in the past, but it’s abundantly clear that, at least in Massachusetts, it no longer does. If an electoral system based on Democratic and Republican primaries no longer generates competitive elections — and it clearly doesn’t — then it needs to change into something that will.