Proponents say this system gives citizens more choices and reduces the chances a “radical” will be elected because not only can everyone vote in the primary, but no one can win by capturing just a plurality (e.g., 37 percent) of the vote. Opponents assert that this merely favors the most politician-like of politicians, people who don’t take firm stands on hot-button issues and remain “inoffensive” enough to be everyone’s second choice. Yet the most significant problem with this system is different: It’s completely incompatible with our larger system.
To grasp why, realize that contrary to popular belief, you’re voting in the general election for the party and not the person. How?
Consider: Senator Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) is thought to be perhaps the most conservative high-profile Democrat in America. Yet as of June 2, 2021, he’d voted with Joe Biden 100 percent of the time.
Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) is despised by the GOP base for being a quintessential liberal anti-Trumper. Yet she voted with President Trump 93 percent of the time. In other words, she voted very much as Marjorie Taylor Greene does today.
These individuals aren’t exceptions, either, but the norm. No matter what politicians say while campaigning, they’ll vote with their party the vast majority of the time. The point?
In practice, we have a binary system in which one of two major parties will wield power.
So essentially, the question put to voters at general election time is always this: Do you want to provide another vote to advance the Democrat agenda or another vote to advance the Republican agenda? Most Americans aren’t aware of this, of course, and thus often focus on personalities (e.g., the Walker vs. Warnock race in Georgia), on “voting for the person.”
(Note: We vote for the person and not the party in traditional primaries, because then we’re voting within a party.)
Our traditional closed primary system, yielding two major-party general-election candidates, mitigates this problem. After all, it presents the voter in our de facto binary system with something entirely congruent: a binary choice.
In a closed primary, voters will tend to vote for the incumbent regardless of how old or corrupt he is. This is because there are no term limits in Congress and seniority is everything as far as bringing the bacon home to the state or district.
So even in a closed primary where voters would prefer the upstart, they tend to vote for the incumbent because it is the "rational" choice. It is the same thinking that goes on when someone decides to NOT vote for the third-party candidate because it might lead to the other major party winning the seat.
The whole system is corrupt from top to bottom. That people and organizations outside a district can contribute to that candidate is unjustifiable. That any money is allowed for "get out the vote" campaigns when everyone knows they are "get out the party member" campaigns is unconscionable.
That limited funds can go to individual campaigns, but unlimited funds can go to "party organizing" is laughable.
Even before the mail-in and ballot harvesting fiascos the system was rigged. If not for one party or the other, certainly for the two flanks of the uniparty.