Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Partisan primaries failed to vet President Biden

President Joe Biden
Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Gruber is senior vice president of Open Primaries, a national election reform organization. Opdycke is president of Open Primaries.

This year’s Democratic Party presidential primary was a choreographed affair dubbed “ Operation Bubble Wrap.” The rules were manipulated by party insiders to ensure Joe Biden would face no scrutiny and no competition. The idea that he should stay in the race because he “won the primary” is absurd. There was no primary. By design.

Leaders of both parties have been manipulating the primary election system for years. This year, though, leaders of the Democratic Party went to draconian lengths to shield President Biden from voters. Now, with his cognitive decline on full display, it's become clearer than ever how the current system — which should have revealed his deficiencies as well as his attributes — is not serving the public interest. It’s time for a change.


Primaries were designed to work differently. One hundred years ago, decades of corrupt bossism provoked calls from voters to bring the public in at the beginning of election season. The reformers at the time called these the “people’s primaries.” Today leaders of both parties have structurally manipulated the system to cement their control under the false claim that these elections are “theirs.”

That’s most obvious in the patchwork of closed primaries that shut out independent voters, who are now, at 51 percent of the national electorate, a larger share than Republicans and Democrats combined. Half the states in the union close their presidential primaries to independent voters. As both parties stagnate, an increasingly small number of partisan voters are calling the shots.

But voter access is only half the problem. Equally challenging is the very way primary elections are run. We allow the parties to control the rules of these elections. It doesn’t have to be this way. Most countries hold nonpartisan elections, administered by an independent authority.

The problem with partisan-run primaries was on full display earlier this year, when Democratic Party insiders manipulated the rules in real time to ensure there was no competition. Not only did they anoint Biden and put out the word among the faithful that he was not to be challenged, but when insurgent primary candidates like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Dean Phillips began running on platforms questioning the president’s fitness, they changed the rules to marginalize them.

The Democratic parties in Florida and North Carolina canceled their primaries altogether, declaring Biden the winner. The Democratic Party of Wisconsin left Phillips — a sitting member of Congress — off the primary ballot and had to be sued all the way to the state's Supreme Ccourt to add him back. All discussion of primary debates were quickly scuttled. That’s why this year was so different. The Democratic Party didn’t just shut out independent voters, it robbed Democratic Party voters of the opportunity to play a meaningful role in the nominating process.

At the time, none of the elected leaders and pundits that have since called for Biden to leave the race questioned the party’s undemocratic actions. In fact quite the opposite, they piled on their criticism of any challengers — from No Labels to Kennedy. Imagine if Biden had faced a competitive primary. The American public ( including George Clooney) would have had the opportunity to see his limitations as well as his attributes directly and make an informed choice.

Now some of these same leaders are calling for some semblance of a “blitz primary.” As the days wane on, even this Hail Mary approach seems less and less likely, as it’s partisan leaders — not the public — once again who are in the decision-making role.

And that’s the challenge. Presidential primaries don’t select candidates, they select delegates to a convention who will vote on the candidates. And while states have limited the independence of delegates over the years, the very partisan nature of these contests have dissuaded reformers from challenging them.

But challenge them we must. Any trust in leaders of either party running our primaries in the public’s interest, rather than their own evolving interest, is gone. Their contempt for voters — independent and party voters alike — is on full display.

One state — Arizona — is bringing an innovative approach to the problem with a ballot initiative this November that would tie the continuation of public funding to a more open presidential primary process. Let’s take that idea national. These are our elections. We pay for them. It’s time for the American people to regain control of the presidential primaries.

Read More

An oversized ballot box surrounded by people.

Young people worldwide form new parties to reshape politics—yet America’s two-party system blocks them.

Getty Images, J Studios

No Country for Young Politicians—and How To Fix That

In democracies around the world, young people have started new political parties whenever the establishment has sidelined their views or excluded them from policymaking. These parties have sometimes reinvigorated political competition, compelled established parties to take previously neglected issues seriously, or encouraged incumbent leaders to find better ways to include and reach out to young voters.

In Europe, a trio in their twenties started Volt in 2017 as a pan-European response to Brexit, and the party has managed to win seats in the European Parliament and in some national legislatures. In Germany, young people concerned about climate change created Klimaliste, a party committed to limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, as per the Paris Agreement. Although the party hasn’t won seats at the federal level, they have managed to win some municipal elections. In Chile, leaders of the 2011 student protests, who then won seats as independent candidates, created political parties like Revolución Democrática and Convergencia Social to institutionalize their movements. In 2022, one of these former student leaders, Gabriel Boric, became the president of Chile at 36 years old.

Keep ReadingShow less
How To Fix Gerrymandering: A Fair-Share Rule for Congressional Redistricting

Demonstrators gather outside of The United States Supreme Court during an oral arguments in Gill v. Whitford to call for an end to partisan gerrymandering on October 3, 2017 in Washington, DC

Getty Images, Olivier Douliery

How To Fix Gerrymandering: A Fair-Share Rule for Congressional Redistricting

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground. ~ Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Col. Edward Carrington, Paris, 27 May 1788

The Problem We Face

The U.S. House of Representatives was designed as the chamber of Congress most directly tethered to the people. Article I of the Constitution mandates that seats be apportioned among the states according to population and that members face election every two years—design features meant to keep representatives responsive to shifting public sentiment. Unlike the Senate, which prioritizes state sovereignty and representation, the House translates raw population counts into political voice: each House district is to contain roughly the same number of residents, ensuring that every citizen’s vote carries comparable weight. In principle, then, the House serves as the nation’s demographic mirror, channeling the diverse preferences of the electorate into lawmaking and acting as a safeguard against unresponsive or oligarchic governance.

Nationally, the mismatch between the overall popular vote and the partisan split in House seats is small, with less than a 1% tilt. But state-level results tell a different story. Take Connecticut: Democrats hold all five seats despite Republicans winning over 40% of the statewide vote. In Oklahoma, the inverse occurs—Republicans control every seat even though Democrats consistently earn around 40% of the vote.

Keep ReadingShow less
Once Again, Politicians Are Choosing Their Voters. It’s Time for Voters To Choose Back.
A pile of political buttons sitting on top of a table

Once Again, Politicians Are Choosing Their Voters. It’s Time for Voters To Choose Back.

Once again, politicians are trying to choose their voters to guarantee their own victories before the first ballot is cast.

In the latest round of redistricting wars, Texas Republicans are attempting a rare mid-decade redistricting to boost their advantage ahead of the 2026 midterms, and Democratic governors in California and New York are signaling they’re ready to “fight fire with fire” with their own partisan gerrymanders.

Keep ReadingShow less
Stolen Land, Stolen Votes: Native Americans Defending the VRA Protects Us All – and We Should Support Them

Wilson Deschine sits at the "be my voice" voter registration stand at the Navajo Nation annual rodeo, in Window Rock.

Getty Images, David Howells

Stolen Land, Stolen Votes: Native Americans Defending the VRA Protects Us All – and We Should Support Them

On July 24, the Supreme Court temporarily blocked a Circuit Court order in a far-reaching case that could affect the voting rights of all Americans. Native American tribes and individuals filed the case as part of their centuries-old fight for rights in their own land.

The underlying subject of the case confronts racial gerrymandering against America’s first inhabitants, where North Dakota’s 2021 redistricting reduced Native Americans’ chances of electing up to three state representatives to just one. The specific issue that the Supreme Court may consider, if it accepts hearing the case, is whether individuals and associations can seek justice under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA). That is because the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, contradicting other courts, said that individuals do not have standing to bring Section 2 cases.

Keep ReadingShow less