Democratizing Primary Elections
The 2016 Republican presidential nominating process featured 17 candidates. They included senators and governors as well as a cardiac surgeon, a tech executive and a businessman/reality TV star. In a Brookings Institution report released prior to the 2020 primary season, titled Voters need help: How party insiders can make presidential primaries safer, fairer, and more democratic, the authors contend that primaries for both the Republican and Democratic parties “cannot promise to choose nominees who are competent to govern or who represent a majority of either parties’ voters.”
The authors, Raymond J. La Raja and Jonathan Rauch, make no attempt to hide their disdain for the candidacy of Donald Trump. However, their purpose is to explain how an unqualified candidate can benefit when lack of party leadership results in a highly fragmented field, and what should be done to prevent that in future presidential primary elections.
Reforms intended to increase voter participation had the effect of sending party insiders to the sidelines, but “primaries function best when primary voters and party professionals work in partnership.” La Raja and Rauch believe that restoring and renewing the professional filter is necessary to supplement the public’s voice with “the opinion of people who have experience in politics and governing.”
Over the country’s history, presidential candidates have been nominated by members of Congress in the early years; by state and national conventions in the last three-quarters of the 19th century; by a primary system promoted by Progressives to remove influence of political “bosses;” and, after reforms of the 1970s and 1980s, there emerged the current set of “superdelegates” who were experienced as office holders to improve the vetting process, as they “would not be pledged automatically to candidates based on primary outcomes.” Only Democratic superdelegates have this freedom, whereas in the Republican Party superdelegates must vote as their state votes.
Although the superdelegates have never overturned results of primary voting, candidates have taken superdelegates’ views as representative of voters and the Democratic Party. But in the 2016 election, objections to the influence of superdelegates resulted in the Democratic Party barring superdelegates from voting on the first ballot of the nominating convention, effectively removing the influence of experienced professionals.
As the mechanics of the primaries changed in 2016, and a plethora of candidates entered the Republican race, changes were also occurring in election financing and in media reporting. “Candidates could bypass traditional moneymen by reaping donations online, tapping deep-pocketed tycoons, or funding themselves. They could bypass traditional media by using social platforms like Twitter and Facebook, and they could hijack traditional media by behaving outrageously.” When multiple candidates split the votes of the more moderate voters, “there is a non-trivial likelihood that the plurality winner will turn out to be unwanted by a majority.”
The Brookings report calls for the restoration of involvement of party professionals in the vetting process. The report documents past elections where party leaders effectively blocked candidates deemed to represent undemocratic positions: Henry Ford in 1924; George Wallace in 1976; and Lyndon LaRouche in 1996. Enhancing the role of superdelegates is recommended. Ranked choice voting, which allows voters to select their second- and third-choice preferences, could provide further information about which candidates are satisfactory to a majority of voters.
Recognizing that increasing involvement of party professionals will be opposed by populists, the authors assert that such peer review would enhance democracy. Peer review by party professionals, “the norm in American politics for all but the last decade or so,” performed a critical function in U.S. political history.