CONGRESS'S QUAGMIRE B
- Fix Federal Debt
- Jan 4
- 5 min read
PRIMARIES, EXTREMELY NARROW PATHWAY PREVENTS COMPETITION
QUAGMIRE (def.) – a difficult, precarious, or entrapping position
Merriam-Webster
OBJECTIVE OF THESE POSTS
To increase public conviction that there will not be a problem-solving Congress until electoral methods that shield our two parties are improved to permit fair competition from others than parties X and Y.
FOUNDING FATHERS QUOTES ON POLITICAL PARTIES
Madison said, “different leaders ambitiously contending for pre-eminence and power…have, in turn, divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity.” Crisis comes when the state is “violently heated and distracted by the rage of party.” Washington in his famous farewell address warned America about “the alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities.” President Adams spoke “a division of the republic into two great parties…is to be dreaded as the great political evil.”
There may well be a need for political parties, but the founding fathers neglected to circumscribe their powers as they did among the three branches of government using checks and balances. So, the two powerful parties have created systems that basically block participation from additional competition – thereby preventing necessary collaboration in Congress.
It is breathtaking that these three amazing men could speak so clearly of our quagmire some 250 years later.
WHAT ARE PRIMARY ELECTIONS?
Purpose: Primary elections are needed to winnow candidates for an office to a manageable number for the general election.
Who Pays for them and Runs Them: State and local governments pay for administering and operating primary elections for seats in Congress. This includes the costs of such activities for the two powerful parties.
Primary Rules for Congress by State (ChatGPT):
Dealing mainly with “who can vote” in a party’s primary
15 states Open: Any voter can choose any party’s primary without prior affiliation. FindLaw
9 states Closed: Only registered party members can vote in that party’s primary. FindLaw
23 states Semi-Closed/Partially Closed: Registered party members must vote in their party; unaffiliated voters may choose which party’s primary to vote in. NCSL
3 states Top-Two / Top-Four: All voters receive the same ballot; the top candidates advance to the general election regardless of party. GovFacts
Dealing with “who can run” in a primary, i.e. whether a state’s primary is “bipartisan or partisan”, (ChatGPT from Ballotpedia),
3 states Bipartisan (open)
47 states Partisan (closed to other parties)
The 3 states that allow other parties to vote in the primaries of our two powerful parties are below. They have changed to these nonpartisan methods in recent years.
Alaska – uses a Top-four primary from which the top four candidates advance to the general election, where Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) is used to select a majority winner.
California & Washington – use a Top-two system, the top two candidates in the primary advance to the general election.
FAIRNESS ISSUES
Funding
Should voters feel that it is unfair to use taxpayer money to fund primaries for a specific political party, one that closed or partially closed to voters not of that party? This happens in 32 of the states.
Should a candidate not of party X or party Y feel discriminated against in 47 states for not being allowed to compete in the primary election against candidates from the other major party or anyone else, especially when the primary is being funded by the taxpayers – almost surely including this candidate?
Competition
Should voters resent not having the opportunity to hear from and choose among all state-qualified candidates in one state-funded primary?
Isn’t it obvious that a primary with candidates from parties X and Y and other sources would elicit fresh ideas and new perspectives during the campaign?
Doesn’t it seem likely that major party candidates would have to temper the extreme and rigid positions so common today?
Doesn’t it seem likely that the winner of the general election following an open and bipartisan primary would be someone more likely to collaborate in Congress to solve America’s big problems?
Control
An open and nonpartisan primary reduces the influence and control of the insiders of parties X and Y, moving some of it to the voters. Why? The electoral laws on Primary elections incent voters to register to a party. About 2/3 of voters are registered with party X or Y. Because 32 or almost 2/3 of the states only permit a registered voter to vote in a primary of party X or Y, and because 47 of 50 states have party primaries closed to other parties, a large percentage of voters choose only from candidates influenced and perhaps selected, controlled, and backed by party leaders. An open and nonpartisan primary would give the voter the agency to choose from all primary candidates. Party leaders would have to be more circumspect in choosing candidates to support. Also, no longer would almost 80% of voters stay home from primaries.
Democracy
Per Merriam-Webster, Democracy is “based on a form of government in which the people choose leaders by voting”. In our present system, whatever it should be called, it is quite easy to see that the duopoly (parties X and Y) have created electoral laws and other systems that have constricted the people from a fair voting system. Primary elections are the primary (pun intended) example. So, our democracy has been impaired.
Effects of Unfair Primaries:
There is a very low turnout for primary elections, lately in the low 20’s% overall (ChatGPT). This means that a quite small portion of the electorate is selecting members of Congress. Those that do vote are more likely to be advocates of the platforms of party X or Y and thus less likely to support the positions of most Americans.
The chart below clearly shows that many more citizens consider themselves to be Independents than to be of Party X or Y. As this has evolved over recent years, the unfairness of primary elections has become a critical issue.
Unfair primary elections exacerbate the feelings among citizens that the political system is unfair and not democratic. Trust in government continues to diminish. This trend is serious as shown in the chart below.
Note in the two charts that the percentage of Independents began rising around 2004, going from 32 to 43% of the eligible citizens by 2025. Over an almost identical time period, the Public Trust in Government began a steady decline from about 50% to about 17%. Does this indicate that citizens are leaving parties X and Y to become independents? If yes, why? Is it at least somewhat due to fiscal mismanagement in Washington, beginning with the Global Financial Crisis of 2008? Is that mismanagement, among other big problems, happening because Congress - totally dominated by parties X and Y - is not solving the nation’s big problems?
The most important effect of unfair primaries is that they may well be the primary reason why we have Congress’s Quagmire, a duopoly of entrenched parties arguing when it should be collaborating to prevent and solve big problems.
Tom Mast 2007
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