Timothy Egan for NYT Opinion:
Hear me out. In Washington, along with California, the top two vote-getters in a congressional primary, regardless of party affiliation, advance to the general election. Sometimes two Democrats make the final. Sometimes two Republicans. Often, it’s one of each, with partisan zealots left out.
In my home state of Washington, the Trump fanatics, conspiracy theorists and misinformation merchants who dominate the G.O.P. are in a lather over the votes by Herrera Beutler and Newhouse to impeach Trump.
“Turning a blind eye to this brutal assault on our Republic is not an option,” Newhouse said last month in announcing his decision.
“I’m not afraid of losing my job,” said Herrera Beutler. “But I am afraid that my country will fail.”
Republicans in her district, a moderate to conservative swath of southwestern Washington, called her vote shameful, and they vowed to primary her. Good luck with that.
In a top-two primary system, Herrera Beutler will almost certainly make the runoff, even if another Republican gets more Republican-leaning votes in the primary. But in the general, she’ll pick up independents and many Democrats, as she did in the past. She won by 13 percentage points last November, in a district that Trump carried by four points.
Removing the leverage to knock out Herrera Beutler in the primary allows her to be more accountable to her constituents than to her party. Little wonder that she’s also a member of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus.
I expressed some similar views here at Slate:
Making these kinds of changes will help assure that elections are fairer and that results will more likely reflect the will of the people. But they won’t do enough to deal with the Trumpian wing of the Republican Party, which needs to be weakened to re-create a system in which both political parties are led by responsible actors, and where leaders cannot be held hostage to a radical minority within the Republican party.
To that end, we need structural change to help Republican moderates fend off primary challenges from Trumpians in the House and Senate. There are a number of forms such changes can take. As the Supreme Court recognized in Rucho v. Common Cause, Congress has broad power to set the rules for congressional redistricting even if states object. Congress can require districts to be drawn with bipartisan or nonpartisan commissions, which can help eliminate some of the more extreme forms of gerrymandering that lead to the election of more extreme Republican candidates. In light of the fact that moderate Republicans fear getting primaried by more extreme insurgents within the party, Congress can require the use of ranked choice voting, or other methods of voting that require winners to represent true electoral majorities.