Are open primaries the answer?
Unhappy about how our government is working?
Katherine Gehl and Michael Porter have a proposition for you.
They say the problem is not the people we are electing, The problem is the way we elect them. The election system creates and maintains the intense partisanship that they believe is the road to gridlock. They would try to take the partisanship out of elections by removing the parties and the parties’ rules of entry from the primaries.
California has shown how to do this. Every candidate runs in the same primary. The top two vote-getters move on to the general election. The proposal by Gehl, a former chief executive at Gehl Foods, and Porter, a Harvard University Business School professor, gets a lot more complicated after the primary.
Everyone who votes in the primary election ranks every candidate from one to four. The first candidate to get 50.1% of the votes wins. If no one gets to that number in the first round, the candidate in fourth place is eliminated and his or her secondchoice ballots are counted. Still no winner? Keep peeling off candidates and choices until someone gets to 50.1%.
The winner will be a member of one of the parties represented or of no party.
Like almost all reforms, this one is susceptible to the ever-present law of unintended consequences.
California discovered early on that a legislative district that leans heavily to the Democrats may find a Republican or Independent can still get to the finals because of a big field of candidates, thereby splitting Democratic votes.
The current Wisconsin election reveals another variation. There are many candidates running as Democrats but only a single Republican candidate who happens to be an incumbent with a significant base.
In a non-party primary to pick the four finalists, the Republican is sure to make it to first place of the four. He even could win on the first round of votes.
In Wisconsin’s U.S. Senate race, all three candidates will make it to the finals. The two Republicans’ chances to get to 50.1% are almost non-existent. The Democrat has a good chance to win it all immediately if all those Dems who show up to back their favorite gubernatorial candidate vote Democratic.
In any case, party loyalty is a big factor even when we move on to November. Moderates are more important in the gubernatorial race but not as important as party loyalty.
In other words, nothing much changes when it gets to November. The primary is an entrepreneurial dream or a nightmare. In Wisconsin.
A lot of states have closed primaries in which voters have to register as a party member to get a ballot. This proposal is revolutionary in those states.
Maine seems to have adopted the Gehl-Porter proposal in its entirety. Whatever else it is, it is popularity over party. No more picking the least unlikable party candidate, and the door for a third party or no party candidate is open.
Gehl and Porter are convinced that candidates who are problems solvers will prevail. This may be desirable, but it isn’t inevitable.
Bill Kraus is a long-time political strategist in Wisconsin. He served 20 years as co-chair of Common Cause Wisconsin.