The Fading Utility of the Primary Election Max Wagner ‘23

The Fading Utility of the Primary Election

Max Wagner ‘23

The history of elections in America is long, convoluted, and at points somewhat illogical. Before the creation of the primary, candidates were simply chosen by parties, taking electoral power from the people. The first presidential primary election was implemented in North Dakota in 1912, followed by the other states, replacing the existing system of party leadership simply choosing the representatives from each party. This was indisputably a positive change for our country, as it provided more power to the people, but was an imperfect change due to the inherent problems with the primary election process. These problems persist today. Despite its noble intentions, the primary system has been twisted into a system of filtering out political moderates, a group that could otherwise have a profound positive impact on our nation.

These problems are no small factor in today’s political climate. Even disregarding the tendency for radical candidates to carry primaries due to only one side of the political spectrum voting, candidates are simply discouraged from running because they don’t believe they can prevail against better-known members of their party. Thus, the primary election has become not a system in place to guarantee voting rights to the people, but rather an outdated tradition that weeds out some of the candidates who we need most. The problem with the primary election is that, ultimately, it never leads to a candidate who will be more universally well-liked to be elected, if they otherwise wouldn’t be. For instance, many candidates who could wholly win the moderate vote, and even some votes from across the aisle, you could still lose your primary, as other candidates from your party, who would certainly win less of the electoral college, could still defeat you by being farther to the extreme.

So what then is the alternative plan? I believe that ranked-choice voting could provide a solution for the nation. It is low in drawbacks, the only one essentially being that people don’t care to take the few minutes it takes to understand the system. If an open ballot including all candidates who run was presented, instead of the winners of each individual primary, people could rank their votes, and the most nationally well-liked candidate would win the presidency each time, instead of the winner being decided by the primary of whichever political party found itself in a more powerful position that year.