Neutral Open Primaries: A Real Fix for a Rigged System

Make Primary Elections Fair, Competitive & Entertaining.

Four Problems with Our Current Primaries

1 - Major parties gain publicity as their nominees sail onto the November ballot with the momentum of victory and a pulse of campaign cash. Third-parties and independents miss the publicity, the victories, and the money. Instead, they must petition to get on the ballot.

2 - Most districts and states are safe for one of the major parties. Small sets of partisan primary voters decide each election before the general election!

3 - In contested districts, third parties and independents do not have a fair chance to win. Support for third parties and independents is under reported because voters fear the spoiler effect. This locks in two party rule and harms third party efforts to generate publicity, recruit new members and candidates, and qualify for future elections.

4 - Low turnout. Blanket primaries are more exciting than traditional primaries.

Third Parties?

Third parties rarely use state-run primaries, even in states with low requirements. American third parties are too small; they do not have enough leaders and core supporters to benefit from state-run primaries. They prefer to nominate candidates in house and petition onto the ballot.

American third parties are not small because voters are satisfied with the major parties; they are small because voters fear spoilers. To avoid electing a major party candidate we detest, we will vote for a mediocre major party candidate instead of a good third party or independent candidate. Third parties deserve a fair chance.

We can achieve great progress by reforming primary elections. Neutral Open Primaries will give third parties a fair chance and a big opportunity to make their case to the public.

Blanket Primaries

A blanket primary (aka jungle primary) is an election that chooses several nominees for a general election from a field that includes all the candidates in the race, both party nominees and unaffiliated candidates.

the Top 4 Model

Designed By and For Wealthy Independents

Unite America is the proponent of Top 4. Executive Director, Nick Troiano said “It sought to elect a handful of independent Senate candidates who could form a “fulcrum” to control the balance of power and leverage their influence to advance bipartisan solutions.”^[1] A brilliant strategy. A small group of wealthy unaffiliated candidates gains great power without the bother of forming a political party.

Top 4 is a two-round system. Round one is a blanket primary for all candidates. The top four candidates advance to round two, which elects the winner. Political parties must choose their nominees “in house”. Final 5 primaries are the same as Top 4, except five candidates advance.

LLL Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) is used to choose the winner. RCV is a better voting method than “choose one” Plurality voting, but it does not eliminate vote splitting and spoilers.

Too Many Petitions

In a Top 4 race, all candidates, even from major parties, must petition onto the ballot. Signatures will become costly and difficult to get. A voter can sign only one nominating petition for each race. A second signature is invalid. Third-party and under-funded independents may struggle to qualify.

Intentional Confusion

Top 4 primaries claim to be nonpartisan. In truth, they are confusing. The ballots for both rounds do not show which candidates are party nominees. Instead, ballots display each candidate’s party affiliation from voter registration records. A Top 4 ballot may show several Democrats or Republicans.

The confusion will annoy voters. Party nominees will lose votes due to vote splitting. Well-funded independents benefit, as designed.

Wealthy Independents

Well-heeled independents are not subject to party bosses, but they accept donor class dollars. Most wealthy candidates are loyal to their economic class. We dispel the myth that favoring the rich helps the economy in LLL The Second Law of Economics.

Nobody pays attention to unaffiliated candidates unless they have a lot of money and/or fame. Participation in a blanket primary that leads to a fair general election (an election that uses a voting method superior to Plurality voting and RCV) would give under funded independents more publicity.

Neutral Open Primaries - Superior to Top 4

Neutral Open Primaries are fair to all voters, candidates and parties.

Like Top 4, Neutral Open Primaries is a two-round system. The 1st round blanket primary includes all party nominees and independent candidates. Parties nominate their candidates in house. Four candidates advance to the general election.

There are four key differences from the Top 4 model.

1 - Ballots show which candidates are party nominees. Other candidates are not allowed to display a party name.

2 - The nominees for all parties qualify for the primary ballot without petitions. To represent all Americans, we keep qualifications for party status low.

3 - In lieu of the qualifications and responsibilities of political parties, unaffiliated candidates must petition onto the ballot.

4 - Replace Ranked Choice Voting. To avoid vote splitting and spoilers, we use BTR-Score for the final vote.

BTR-Score

LLL BTR-Score is the best voting method for single winner elections, far superior to Plurality voting and RCV. BTR-Score is easy; give the best candidate a top score of 6, score the worst 0. Score the other candidates in comparison. Ties are allowed, even for best and worst. The ratings seed a single-elimination tournament. This tournament is an instant runoff.

The top seed goes to the candidate with the highest total score; the candidate with the lowest total score is the bottom seed. The two lowest seeds meet in the first contest of the tournament. The candidate preferred on the most ballots wins. The winner meets the next-lowest seed in the second contest. This continues until the survivor meets the top seed in the final contest which elects the winner.

If you gave candidate B a score of 4 and candidate C a score of 2, your vote would go to B when they meet in the tournament. If you rated them equally, your vote would not count because you have no preference between them.

Ancient & New

BTR-Score is a Condorcet method; it will always elect the candidate who can beat all other candidates one on one. In the rare election with no “beats all” candidate, BTR-Score will elect a deserving winner, the champion of the single elimination tournament. Ramon Llull proposed the “beats all” concept in 1299. Nicolas Caritat, the Marquis de Condorcet, popularized “beats all” methods in the 18th century.

BTR-Score encourages civil campaigns. Candidates have a strong incentive to appeal to a wide audience, and voters can punish rude candidates with low scores.

BTR-Score complies with state constitutions that require election winners to have the “highest,” “largest,” or “greatest” number of votes or a “plurality” of the votes.

Neutral Primary Election voting method

Plurality voting is better suited for a blanket primary than single-winner elections. Most voters would vote for their favorite candidate; this would yield a fair result that would tend to nominate four candidates with distinct platforms.

If we use Plurality voting, you would face an interesting decision: should you vote for your favorite candidate without regard for how others might vote, do you vote for a candidate you like who is in a tight race to be one of the four finalists, or do you vote to make sure an acceptable major party candidate makes the final round?

Giving each voter four votes would allow block voting. A dominant faction could run four similar candidates and win all four final round spots. Approval, RCV, and Score methods might suffer from this problem.

Adapting a proportional method could be fairer than Plurality voting, but it may yield four candidates with less distinct platforms. Sequential Proportional Score Voting^[2] is one possibility. We will deliberate on this issue in these pages before proposing a formal legislative measure.

Three Round Option
Party Primaries - Neutral Open Primary - General Election Final
To give voters full control, we could hold party primaries before a Neutral Open Primary, followed by a Top 4 final. A three-round system will create space to consider tough issues and new ideas.

We propose allowing each party to choose between an open, semi-open, or closed primary, or they could nominate candidates in house.

Independent Primary for Unaffiliated Candidates?

We could hold an open primary race for all unaffiliated candidates. This race would create publicity for under funded independents. The independent champion would advance to the blanket primary with a chunk of publicity and the momentum of victory The Independent Primary would prevent a glut of independents in the blanket primary.

The second-round Neutral Open Primaries will be more entertaining than the current primaries. The nominees of all parties, large and small, and the independent champion will compete. A four-candidate final in the general election will put voters in charge.

Yes, a third round of primary races will increase election costs. Fair elections that give voters real choices are like good accounting systems for businesses, well worth the money. Voters must be able to steer the ship to make democracy work.

A Great Voting System
Unlike traditional and Top 4 primaries, Neutral Open Primaries are fair to all parties, candidates, and voters.

We can make a profound improvement to our elections with Neutral Open Primaries.

Protect Third Parties
This only works if small parties can maintain political party status. Major parties will try to exclude small parties. Eternal vigilance will be required. The history of American election reform is littered with backsliding.