Category Archives: primaries

The DNC primary calendar for 2028 remains unclear–and it complicates the path for some candidates

primaries

Politico recently published this public relations piece on behalf of former Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg noting that he was “clearing a path for a potential presidential campaign instead.” The New York Times looks at Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as a “clear leader” to succeed Senator Bernie Sanders and his movement–and perhaps even a presidential run (yes, she’s 35 years old).

Both Buttigieg and Sanders thrived in the DNC’s traditional calendars, when the Iowa caucuses allowed upstart outsiders who excelled at retail politics to earn a win and start a movement. In 2016, Sanders gave Hillary Clinton a real race; in 2020, Buttigieg crashed badly in South Carolina, placing behind Tim Steyer. Nevertheless, that calendar–think Barack Obama in 2008–could work as an advantage to the outsider.

In 2024, the DNC altered the rules to prevent meaningful challenges to Joe Biden’s candidacy (not unlike changes some Republican state parties did in 2020 to prevent meaningful challenges to Donald Trump’s candidacy). It moved South Carolina to the front of the calendar and relegated Iowa and New Hampshire to less important roles. It was purportedly a one-time adjustment, highlighting how it was really about securing Biden’s re-nomination. But it also acclimated Democrats to the idea that Iowa first, New Hampshire second was not a required thing. (Of course, New Hampshire ignored the DNC’s rules, and it still saw its entire delegation seated as the threat from the DNC about disrupting the calendar was, it turns out, a fairly empty threat.)

This entire discussion really highlights how the decisions of a private political party shapes the presidential nomination field. An Iowa start, a South Carolina start, or a Michigan start all look very different; so, too, do caucuses or primaries. It’s definitely something to watch in the months ahead.

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“The county line is officially gone with a new primary ballot design for New Jersey, but advocates may sue again”

ballot access, primaries

Philadelphia Inquirer:

New Jersey has a new primary ballot design now that Gov. Phil Murphy has signed it into law — though it remains to be seen whether it the measure will be challenged in court.

With the governor’s quiet approval last week, the new rules of the ballot shepherd the state into a new era of primary elections.

The main purpose of the ballot overhaul is to organize candidates by the office they’re seeking, getting rid of the longstanding county line design. The county line grouped together party-endorsed candidates and put outsiders not supported by their county political establishment at a disadvantage by listing them on less prominent positions on the ballot.

The death of the county line ballot is a victory for candidates who want to run for office without the prized endorsement of their county party committee, and it can motivate more candidates to throw their hat in the ring to compete for support from voters, not party bosses. This year, 10 candidates are running for governor.

But progressive advocates say the new design still has issues reminiscent of the old design, in part because it still groups together certain candidates in a way that could favor the establishment.The new law provides design guidelines for clerks to create primary ballots for their counties, but the plan for the ballot is currently just words on a page. The new ballots will be created in time for the June 10 primary.

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“Georgia Republicans renew push for closed primary elections”

political parties, primaries

AJC:

Top Georgia Republicans are renewing their push to only let voters who register as party members cast ballots in GOP primaries.It’spart of an attempt to guarantee more ideological purity among the nominees.

The idea to end Georgia’s open primaries, which now allow any voter to choose either party’s ballot, has long failed to gain traction.

But Georgia GOP chair Josh McKoon says it’s time to reopen the debate now that President Donald Trump is back in the White House.

He released the party’s “election integrity priorities” late Tuesday, which is topped by a call for closed party primary elections.

McKoon told Politically Georgia that party stalwarts are clear they want “Republican voters electing the Republican nominees.”

“It is common sense to limit participation in Republican primaries to those voters who declare their allegiance to the Republican Party so our nominees reflect the philosophy of our voters,” he said.

The overhaul faces long odds under the Gold Dome and will be staunchly opposed by more mainstream Republicans who rely on moderate and independent votes to carry swing legislative districts….

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“Ranked-choice voting continues to work in Alaska. It would everywhere else, too.”

alternative voting systems, primaries

Washington Post’s Editorial Board comes out in favor of RCV, arguing it is working well in both Alaska and Maine to select more moderate candidates that are more likely to reflect the preferences of electoral majorities, and that it is not confusing:

“Ranked-choice voting continues to work in Alaska. It would everywhere else, too.”Apart from accusations that it favors Democrats, which haven’t been borne out, the biggest knock on RCV is that it’s too confusing for people to rank candidates. But studies show that virtually all ballots cast in RCV elections are valid, with error rates similar to those of traditional elections. Usually, after trying it once, people become more comfortable with ranking candidates when they realize that they don’t need to vote strategically, worrying about throwing away their vote by supporting as their first choice someone who is unlikely to win.”

I do wonder how well RCV would transfer to larger, less rural states. Alaska and Maine are certainly not representative, and neither is subject to the same national forces as, say, Pennsylvania.

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“Three California Minor Parties File Federal Lawsuit Against Top-Two System”

political parties, primaries

Ballot Access News: This week, three California minor parties filed a federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the California top-two system. The parties are Peace & Freedom, Green, and Libertarian. Here is the 12-page Complaint in Peace & Freedom Party v Weber, n.d., 4:24cv-08308.

The case challenges the California system as an impediment to ballot access for minor parties, thereby sidestepping Washington State Grange v. Washington State Republican Party, 552 U.S. 442 (2008) and the decisions of lower courts upholding similar systems in Washington and Alaska:

“In its almost fourteen years of existence, the California top-two system has barred all minor party members from appearing on the general election ballot, except in races in which only one of the two major parties ran someone in that race. There is only one exception to that statement; in 2024 an American Independent Party candidate for Assembly qualified for the general election ballot, even though there had been candidates from both major parties in the race.”

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“A Setback for Election Reformers?”

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Walter Olson at Cato has the following reflection on the recent round of election reform in which he cautions commentators to distinguish “ambitious” reforms that “abolish[] party primaries and then employ[] RCV in a general election” (like in Alaska) from more moderate efforts to introduce rank-choice voting into the existing party primary system.

“On the whole, RCV finds more of a footing in places where politics is dominated by one party—large cities are the model case—and where reformers can pitch it as a way to make primaries work better.”

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“Ranked choice voting and open primaries retained in Alaska after final ballot count”

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An update on the Alaska ballot initiative from the Anchorage Daily News. The total ballot count in the end was 340,510. The repeal effort appears to have failed by 664 votes.

“A coalition of left-leaning and moderate legislators in the Alaska House has announced its plans to form a majority in the coming legislative session.

Members of the coalition — which is slated to include mostly Democrats and independents alongside two GOP lawmakers — have indicated they hope that additional Republicans will join. But those Republicans have not committed to joining such a coalition as they await the fate of Alaska’s open primary system.”

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“Effort to repeal ranked choice voting and open primaries in Alaska on track to narrowly fail after latest ballot count”

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From Anchorage Daily News:

“Results posted Monday showed 50.03% of voters opposed the measure repealing ranked choice voting, while 49.97% were in favor of the repeal. Just 192 votes separated the two camps, with more ballots set to be counted.”

A final count is expected on November 20, the final day for accepting absentee ballots from overseas.

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“Ranked Choice Voting: What Happened & What’s Next”

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Michael Parsons (FairVote, Senior Legal Fellow) and  Meredith Sumpter (FairVote CEO) offer reflections at Democracy Takes on what the results of the 2024 ballot initiatives tell us about the future of rank-choice voting as a reform. A peek here:

“In 2016, only two million Americans lived in the 10 cities using RCV. As of today, that number has grown to nearly 17 million Americans in over 50 cities, counties, and states. The number has grown because the reform works, giving voters greater say and incentivizing elected officials to get things done for their constituents. 

On Election Day, the number grew yet again, but we also fell far short of what we had hoped . . . . As might be expected, some long-standing critics of RCV have seized on the state-level losses and are offering a typical post-election analysis: “Why the results prove I was right all along.”

But there’s a difference between hot takes and hard work. And it’s difficult to imagine any major election reform that would have sailed to victory this year. There were numerous election reforms on the ballot in addition to ranked choice voting – including independent redistricting commissions and open primaries. All have won statewide victories in recent years. This cycle, all of them failed at the statewide level.”

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My Forthcoming Yale Law Journal Feature: “The Stagnation, Retrogression, and Potential Pro-Voter Transformation of U.S. Election Law”

authoritarian threats in US, ballot access, Bush v. Gore reflections, campaign finance, cheap speech, chicanery, Constitutional Right to Vote, election administration, election law and constitutional law, Election Meltdown, election subversion risk, First Amendment theory, legislation and legislatures, political equality, political parties, political polarization, primaries, Real Right to Vote, social media and social protests, Supreme Court, The Voting Wars, voting, Voting Rights Act

I have written this draft, forthcoming this spring in Volume 134 of the Yale Law Journal. I consider it my most important law review article (or at least the most important that I’ve written in some time). It offers a 30,000-foot view of the state of election law doctrine, politics, and theory. The piece is still in progress, so comments are welcome. Here is the abstract:

American election law is in something of a funk. This Feature explains why, what it means, and how to move forward.

Part I of this Feature describes election law’s stagnation. After a few decades of protecting voting rights, courts (and especially the Supreme Court), acting along ideological—and now partisan—lines, have pulled back on voter protections in most areas of election law and deprived other actors including Congress, election administrators, and state courts of the ability to more fully protect voters rights. Politically, pro-voter election reform has stalled out in a polarized and gridlocked Congress, and the voting wars in the states mean that ease of access to the ballot depends in part on where in the United States one lives. Election law scholarship too has stagnated, failing to generate meaningful theoretical advances about the key purposes of election law.

Part II considers the retrogression of election law doctrine, politics, and theory to a focus on the very basics of democracy: the requirement of fair vote counts, peaceful transitions of power, and voter access to reliable information. Courts on a bipartisan basis in the aftermath of the 2020 election rejected illegitimate attempts to overturn Joe Biden’s presidential election victory. Yet the courts’ ability to thwart attempted election subversion remains a question mark in light of the Supreme Court’s recent decisions in Trump v. Anderson and Trump v. United States. Politically, Congress came together at the end of 2022 to pass the Electoral Count Reform Act to deter future attempts to manipulate electoral college rules in order to subvert election results, but future bipartisan action to prevent retrogression seems less likely. Further, because of the collapse of local journalism and the rise of cheap speech, voters face a decreased ability to obtain reliable information to make voting decisions consistent with their interests and preferences. Meanwhile, parties have become potential paths for subversion. Party-centered election law theory and the First Amendment “marketplace of ideas” theory have not yet incorporated these emerging challenges.

Part III considers the potential to transform election law doctrine, politics, and theory in a pro-voter direction despite high current levels of polarization, the misperceived partisan consequences of pro-voter election reforms, and new, serious technological and political challenges to democratic governance. Election law alone is not up to the task of saving American democracy. But it can help counter stagnation and thwart retrogression. The first order of business must be to assure continued free and fair elections and peaceful transitions of power. But the new election law must be more ambitiously and unambiguously pro-voter. The pro-voter approach to election law is one grounded in political equality and based on four principles: all eligible voters should have the ability to easily register and vote in a fair election with the capacity for reasoned decisionmaking; each voter’s vote is entitled to equal weight; the winners of fair elections are recognized and able to take office peacefully; and political power is fairly distributed across groups in society, with particular protection for those groups who have faced historical discrimination in voting and representation.

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“Record number of open primary initiatives on the ballot”

political parties, primaries

Pluribus:

Voters in as many as half a dozen states will decide this year whether to open primary elections to independent and crossover voters in what supporters say is the broadest-ever assault on the traditional partisan primary process.

Ballot initiatives to open partisan primaries to all voters have qualified for November’s election in Nevada, South Dakota, Idaho and the District of Columbia. A Maricopa County judge ruled on Friday that Arizona’s version qualified for the ballot. Supporters of open primaries are waiting for final determinations in Colorado and Montana, too….

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