The US Needs to Switch to an Open Primary System
As left of center Democrats lament the practical end of Bernie Sanders’ candidacy, they’re directing a lot of their ire at the state of New York’s closed primary system. That system excludes the non-party-registered from voting in a party’s primary.
But in a duopolistic political system, there’s no reason to have closed primaries. When there are only two “realistic” options for voters around the country, or at least only two options with any national attention, then it should be up to the entire country to select those two candidates. New York is the perfect example of why all primaries should be open.
[C]losed primaries are ostensibly designed to maintain party purity in the selection process of presidential candidates. In practice, this means that only registered party members may vote in the primary to elect the president.
There is a logic to this- in order to participate in the primary you should be in the party, no? But that doesn’t work with the reality of modern American politics.
In modern American politics, excluding independent voters from the two main parties’ primaries creates a false pretense of democracy. It’s not possible for Americans with an interest in third party politics to find a slate of candidates for their state’s primaries due to a myriad of factors.
The lack of independent voters in the New York primary may have delivered the state to Clinton.
[I]n New York, most third parties in New York take advantage of the state’s “fusion voting” to endorse major candidates in exchange for concessions political and personal.
The Huffington Post’s Dan Collins explains:
Every state has third parties, but in New York they are particularly important and powerful because they don’t nominate their own candidates. They cross-endorse the Republicans and Democrats, under a system known as fusion voting.
New York is one of the few states in the country that allows fusion voting. Advocates say it lets voters express their support for a third party’s values without having to waste their votes on a third party candidate.
Given this factor, it seems silly to restrict New Yorkers to only voting within their party. The Democrats and the Republicans are frequent beneficiaries of the advocacy of third party endorsements and independent voters who are swayed by the advocacy of the state’s minor parties.
[W]hen the two major parties nominate their candidates- for president all the way down to state offices- they cut these voters out of the process. That’s not fair. It would be one thing if minor party candidates- when there are any- were given the same amount of media attention and oxygen as the two major candidates.
But they’re not, and they’re not at the national level either. So it makes no sense to ostracize a sizable plurality of Americans from the decision of which candidate they have to vote for in the quadrennial cage match that is the US presidential election cycle.
All primaries should be open as long as the party duopoly continues in US politics. Full stop.
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