Thought Experiments: On Top-Two Open Primaries

If you follow voting issues, or if you happen to live in California, you may be aware of Proposition 14, an initiative which seeks to replace party-based primaries in the state with the so-called "top-two open primary" (TTOP); top-two because only the top two vote-getters get to appear on the ballot for the general election, and open because its open to candidates and voters from all parties.

It's a terrible idea. Let me show you why, by means of a few thought-experiments:

#1: Party Hack

First, let's presume I'm an ultra-partisan party hack for one of the two major parites; all I care about is whether or not a member of my party wins the general election, and that a member of the other major party doesn't. What changes for me under TTOP?

Before TTOP, the only reason I cared about primaries at all was I wanted to candidate with the best chance to win the general election to come out of the party primary; typically, I tend to back someone who's a moderate, rather than an extreme, member of my party, so that they'll get some cross-over support in the general, and pick up the moderates and independents; but not someone who's crazy moderate, such that the "base" (read: extreme wing of the party) stay home on election day... which means I can actually back a much more moderate candidate than their grumblings would attest to (they'll come around; after all, they wouldn't want a member of the other party to win, would they?)

What's different for me with TTOP? To keep things simple, let's assume that the other party only has a single candidate in the TTOP. Well, I have a small problem: if my moderate is too moderate, then the base will abandon him for the more-extreme option. And then, fearing that the extreme candidate in my party and the moderate member of my party will be the top-two, my cross-over support starts to slip away. So I stand I good chance to see my moderate go down, and the general to be between my extremist and the other party's guy; and that's a contest that I worry I might lose.

On the other hand, maybe I pick up a lot of true moderates. As long as the primary voters really don't care in a fight between my extremist and the other party's guy, then they have nothing to lose in voter for my moderate. But there's two problems with that. One, they really have to not care which of the those two wins, and most moderates lean one way or the other. Two, actual moderate (or independents or what have you) aren't used to voting in the formerly party-only primaries, so I'll need to step up my get-out-the-vote game, while focusing it on an entirely new electorate. That'll cost me a pretty penny.

These two forces pull in opposite directions with respect to how "moderate" the final election winner will be. But which force is stronger? Which is more likely to come up? A lot of ink is being sacrificed over that debate, but the best analytical guess comes from The Center For Government Studies [PDF], who conclude that, averaged over time, there will only be minimal improvement. Sometimes you'll end up with a more moderate eventual winner, but sometimes you'll get the crazy. By "on average" though, it means we're adding a lot of variance, which is to say, randomness. But we don't want randomness, we want accountability, and transparency, and responsiveness. Randomness doesn't help anyone. Still, I have to play the odds, and no matter what, I back my moderate.

But what if the other party chooses to also run two candidates against my two candidates? Then things get a bit more complicated, because now there's the chance that neither of my guys makes it to election day. Now I need to do extensive polling, and advertise it widely, because I've got to make sure that, no matter which of our two guys we choose to back, we've all got to back him, because in this case, a split vote could mean we're out with no chance of recovery.

My instincts point me clearly towards a simple conclusion: it would be really nice if we could have a party primary before the open primary. Except that's, for one, illegal now, and two, kind of pointing out how ridiculously stupid this law is in the first place. And the problem only gets worse for me if there are more members of my party running; as long as there's more than one candidate not of my party, I need to do everything I can to limit the number of members of my party that run, and the one tool I have for this, a party primary, is gone.

If I'm a party hack, I don't really like TTOP.

Separately, let's consider the case where there's three candidates in the TTOP: my guy, the other guy, and a third-party candidate. I still need to do a lot of polling and advertising, because if the third-party guy is doing well, and is doing well at my party's expense, then it's similar to the case where the other party was running two candidates; I might be out before the general. This is the dream scenario that a lot of third-party backers are envisioning for themselves now, where they unseat a major party candidate and go into the final vote. But how likely is that? Thankfully, we already know the answer to that, because TTOP is functionally the same as another voting system we've looked at: instant runoff voting. And we know that, in many situations involving three candidates, IRV leads to spoiled elections, and spoiled elections lead to a two-party dominated system. Which means we get the "lesser of two evils" voters, and things keep working for us just as before.

#2: A Moderate Voter

On the flip side, the problems are equal, but opposite. I can try to vote for third-parties, but I still probably see a spoiler before I see a winner, which the party hacks will be betting on. So I'll try to vote for more moderate members of major parties; which is fine, unless both parties are running a moderate, in which case I have to do a lot of homework to make sure the moderate vote doesn't get split such that neither moderate goes to the general and we're stuck with a vote between two insane extremists.

Sound and Fury

So in the aggregate, what we find is an effectively identical average effectiveness (perhaps a smidge better, according to simulations), but one that's surrounded by a lot more random variance, and with a whole lot more money spent on polling and advertising; which is, again, the same conclusion as the Center For Government Studies came to. And really, do we want to enact a change whose most significant effect will be to make our elected representatives to be more dependent on their corporate financiers?

All in all, TTOP isn't worth the trouble. So if you're Californian, remember to vote NO on Proposition 14.

The Paradoxical Primary

2008 was a historic election, and understandably for such a momentous vote, it saw the highest voter turnout percentage in over 40 years. But still, only about 63% of eligible voters took the opportunity to participate. The 2008 election also saw one of the closest and most drawn-out presidential primary contest in American history, and "Super Tuesday" set an all-time-high record for participation. That record? 27%

Primaries are funny things. In virtually every city and county in America, the local government pays an exorbitant amount of money—nearly as much as it spends on the general election—for a vote which is not only poorly attended, but which a growing number of voters are legally barred from participating in (due to both more-restrictive affiliation laws and the growing ranks of third-party and independent registrations). And furthermore, why are public funds being expended at all, when political parties are private organizations?

The U.S. Constitution makes no mention of parties; and George Washington famously warned against such factionalization. Nevertheless, the First Party System coalesced right in Washington's cabinet chambers (among his secretaries of State and of the Treasury). And despite the fact that pretty much everyone has been complaining about it ever since, we've had essentially the same two-party dynamic straight through to today.

On the flip side, consider that, of the 435 house elections held in 2008 (concurrent with those same high voter-turnout numbers), 56 were uncontested, and an astounding 149 more were won by two-to-one margins. That's over 47% where it's safe to say the "real" election didn't matter at all, and it was the primary that decided the outcome. This is the secret truth of political parties: they exist for one reason, and one reason only, and that is to hold primaries.

Why are primaries so important?

Why do we have a two-party system?

The answers to these two questions are the same: our voting system is stupid. It's stupid because it does an abysmally poor job of deciding between more than two options. Parties hold primaries in order to limit the number of options presented to voters, so that like-minded candidates won't overload the system such that every one of them loses to some other, presumably less-worthy opponent. We have two parties because like-minded candidates continued to band together into parties until a manageable number of options were presented in the final vote: two.

The collapse from a nation of individual free-thinkers to two-party rigidity happens almost instantly, but once reached, is almost impossible to escape. And when it is escaped, we fall back almost as quickly; hopefully not to many of us die along the way. But this is as much a moral failing on our part as it is a moral failing of a stone to fall to the ground. As much as the contours of the laws of physics inescapably control the path of the stone, the contours of our voting system control the path of our politics. The difference is, we can change our voting system.

Of course, we change our voting system all the time. Ballot Access News notes that, in the month of March alone, nine states had bills introduced changing the vote percentage, or the number of signatures, or the number of registrations, needed to get on the ballot for elections. Seven states are considering laws to change precisely who can vote in primaries. And some states are considering larger changes, such as California's proposition 14, which would replace all party-specific primaries with a single blanket-primary, from which only the top two vote-getters would appear on the ballot for the actual election. Every single one of these efforts is a poor attempt to patch the system without acknowledging the underlying truth that our voting system is stupid because it does an abysmally poor job of deciding between more than two choices, and until we can change that fact, no change can initiate the systemic reform that the backers of these efforts naively expect them to.

Prop 14 is particularly egregious since the failures of "top two blanket primary" are well-known, and functionally identical to "top two runoff elections", which have also led to disappointing results.

I recently read "Grand Illusion" by Theresa Amato (campaign manager for Ralph Nader in 2000 and 2004). Chapter 8 of the book is titled "'The Debate Commission Sucks'", although the book's other eight chapters could have had similarly dismissive titles. ("Ballot Access Laws Suck", "Being a Third Party Sucks", "Lawsuits (over ballot access) Suck", "Democrats Suck (and blame us)", "The Judicial System (with respect to ballot access laws) Sucks", "The Federal Election Commission Sucks", and "Voting Administration In This Country Sucks") Ms. Amato, and indeed, Ralph Nader and everyone around him, are berating a stone for falling. Although, in her defense, she does make some effort to suggest solutions, although most of them are along the same lines as what Ballot Access News is tracking. She does, however, make two passing references to the real solution: score voting (which appears in her index under an alternate name, as "range voting").

Score voting, and only score voting [PDF], can correctly adjudicate an election with three candidates. Three is a very important number. Scientist have known since Newton how to determine all the physical interactions between two objects; such as a stone falling to the ground, or the Moon orbiting the Earth. There is a simple equation which will tell us the precise positions of both objects at any time in the future. But when we add a third object, just one more, that goes away. A three-body system is a chaotic system, and while it may appear as stable as a two-body system for an extended time frame, it is inherently unpredictable.

That sort of unpredictability is what we need, because its the freedom to make our own path rather than to be locked into this repeating orbit. It's what the 40% of Americans who aren't members of the Democratic or Republican party want, even if they can't articulate it that way. It's what everyone who rails against ballot access laws or rallies for new primary laws wants, even if they don't know it. We want a smarter democracy; one that can count to three.