As I pored over the results from last Tuesday’s primary election and read the analysis of both conservative and liberal media, I noticed they were all essentially declaring the same victor. As Mark Preston wrote in his article “Open season on political incumbents” for CNN, the results of Tuesday’s primary races seemed to assert a “common thread of anti-establishment sentiment.”
It’s important to remember that in primaries, it’s often the case that people can only vote for the candidate running under the party they are affiliated with. Democrats can vote for Democratic candidates and Republicans for Republicans. People have claimed this method allows the candidate from each party who goes forward in general or run-off elections to be the candidate who most accurately represents the ideology of the party as a whole.
Though the arguments for and against open and closed primaries are vast and complicated, essentially because they rely on a certain amount of speculation on the ways voters think, the more substantial argument against the open primary is that if Republicans were permitted to vote for the Democratic candidate to proceed in the general election, they might choose someone who they believe would be easily defeated by the opposing party, and thus render illegitimate the Democratic primary. And Democrats might do the same to the Republicans.
Prop 14, which is on the ballot for the June 8 primary election in California, could change this tradition. It proposes California change its primary election system from a closed primary to an open primary.
I join my voice with the writer of Stanford editorial “California should switch to open primary elections,” who argues, “In a political climate that is increasingly polarized by party, opening up the vote would allow voters to see the candidates on a spectrum and break down the ‘us vs. them’ mentality that pervades the current closed system.”
When I think about the problems facing this country with regard to political discourse, I think that it really boils down to a lack of reverence for “facts.” Indeed, there are times when I dwindle into a postmodern subjectivity and wonder whether facts really exist in the context of politics.
The conclusion I have come to is that the only way to navigate the American political culture and to participate in its discourse in any meaningful way is to disregard ideology. Ideological leaders are bound to mislead people at some point along the way, simply because there comes a point at which elections matter above all else. As Jonathan Alter writes in his article “The Jackass Reduction Plan: Open Primaries are Step 1” in Newsweek, “We live in a centrist country with a polarized Congress. Bipartisanship will always be a mirage as long as politicians’ biggest fear is a primary challenge.”
Politicians and pundits want to keep their jobs. The way they keep their jobs is to convince the public the methods by which they are running the program or supporting those methods — whether Democrats or Republicans — is the only viable way to do it. If voters were able to consider both candidates, irrespective of political affiliation and who is offered on their ballots, I think it would force them to consider ideas outside of their personal ideologies. In this way, Prop 14 could have a positive impact in the process of politics and in the quality of political discourse in America.
Ideology is really the culprit here. I always try to have a logical foundation for what I believe. When I started my column two years ago, I really struggled with the title, ultimately resting on labeling myself a liberal only because I decided the majority of my writing would be defending my fiscal beliefs — which are liberal-leaning. But when I hear things on the news, I always have to have a rationale for rejecting or affirming it. And that’s where I’m headed with my argument in support of Prop 14.
It may be a high-minded thought—a simple expansion in the candidates offered to us in primaries would expand the process by which people make decisions in voting. But there’s really no greater “anti-establishment sentiment” than to knock down the ideologies that govern our decisions and identities within the political culture.
Stephanie England is an English senior and Mustang Daily political columnist.
Prop 14 is not an open primary and it does not give people more choices. The proposition sends the top two vote-getters, regardless of party affiliation, to the general election. This means that in a district there could be two Democrats on the general election ballot, and would completely shut out one party. Also, it makes it almost impossible for third party candidates to run in the general election. Additionally the option of a write in candidate is eliminated. If one of the top two candidates changed their platform after the primary or was convicted of some crime, then the voters would be left with only one option. This is not a step towards freedom of choice, it is a giant step backward. Prop 14 is not only opposed by conservatives either. The firerfighters’ and teachers’ associasion as well as the nurses’ union all oppose it as well.
Supporter of Prop 14 love the spin they get from the term “open primary”. But open primaries are something quite different — and something the backers of Prop 14 consciously chose not to propose. In open primary states (there are 21 or 22 of them) voters don’t register as members of a party. Instead they chose a party’s ballot on primary election day.
If the members of a social group — moderates or anyone else — are not getting their fair share of seats in the legislature, they should either form a new political party or become active in one of the existing parties. They should not try to move the goal posts closer to their own line of scrimmage. The wealthy backers of Prop 14 have the resources to get a centrist, pro-business party off the ground. Ask yourself why they don’t. I think it’s because they like the two-party system just fine, thank you. They just think they have lost the degree of control they used to have over it.
I think there’s a typo in the third paragraph, specifically in the first sentence:
“Though the arguments for and against open and closed primaries are vast and complicated, essentially because they rely on a certain amount of speculation on the ways voters think, the more substantial argument against the open primary, in my opinion, is that if Republicans.”
I can’t seem to make sense of this sentence.
When the MD edited my column, I think someone forgot to finish editing. The typo wasn’t in my original draft. It should say “if Republicans were permitted to…”
“When the MD edited my column, I think someone forgot to finish editing.”
I’m shocked she even began in the first place.
The MD reserves the right to edit all submissions for grammar and spelling, including those of their columnists. Admittedly, the sentence was long. But it made sense if read carefully. There’s no harm done, though. It was just an oversight.