Welcome to the latest edition of The Expand Democracy 3, written this week by Rob Richie with the support of Eveline Dowling and Nivea Krishnan. Every two weeks, we highlight promising pro-democracy ideas and local, national, and global news.
The last 5 California governor polls show 2 Republicans ahead. Source: NY Times
Many reformers and thinkers I greatly respect support California’s Top Two system with unified, all-candidate primaries for creating more competition that involves more voters. Others have been deeply skeptical of a system that limits voters to two options when most people vote. But where Top Two is in place, I suspect all would agree it would be best if the November ballot was sure to offer at least one candidate who has the potential support of a majority of voters. That’s not the case today in California and Washington, but Seattle is modeling a solution.
The root of the problem is a voting rule that limits voters to single choice, which reliably works only when voters are limited to two options. We’d never trust ballot measures with single-choice voting where there was one “yes” option pitted against two “no” alternatives. We are quick to call minor parties and independent candidates “spoilers”. Although Top Two’s runoff mechanism is designed to avoid the problem of split votes, it falls short when the majority divides its votes such that none of the candidates it supports advance to the runoff.
This year’s Top Two election for governor of California has so far drawn nine prominent Democrats and two Republicans. The last five public polls all have shown the two Republicans out front even as large majorities of voters prefer one of the Democrats. While analysts like Downballot argue that Democrats will avoid a lockout, I’m more skeptical. It’s hard to force candidates to abandon a plausible chance to win, and the nine Democrats have largely different bases of support without a clear frontrunner.
Far simpler races have experienced majority-party lockouts. In 2016 in Washington state, a state treasurer Top Two race with two Republicans and only three Democrats resulted in a Democratic lockout despite the Democrats winning a majority of primary votes. In 2024, Washington came within 49 votes of Democrats being locked out again in its public lands commissioner race despite its candidates earning 58% of the vote. In 2014, in California’s state controller race, two Republicans together with 45% came within a scant 0.7% of the vote of locking out the three Democrats.
Passed by voters in 2020 and upheld by the legislature and voters ever since, Alaska’s Top Four primary system is a voter-friendly means to prevent general election lockouts of the majority party through advancing four candidates and deciding the November election with ranked choice voting (RCV). Sightline Institute’s Al Vanderklipp detailed the lockout problem and the Alaska solution in a compelling way last October. Even simpler and more inclusive of minor parties would be to do what nearly every city with RCV: hold a single, all-candidate election with RCV.
But some cautious partisans want to see more evidence that RCV works in decisive general elections. For them, there’s an easy fix to the lockout problem that Seattle will pioneer in its Two Two primary next year. Seattle will hold an RCV election in the primary and then advance the top two finishers to the runoff. That brings all the usual positive benefits of RCV to the primary – that is, incentivizing more voter engagement and more substantive campaigns – while always avoiding a lockout of the majority party from the Top Two runoff in November.
Sightline again offers a great analysis of this solution. In November, its executive director Alan Durning detailed the looming problem for Democrats in Washington state, as its two U.S. Senators are both nearing retirement after decades in office, and there is pent-up energy for many Democrats to run. Of course solving the lockout problem isn’t just for Democrats – there are plenty of Republican majority districts in California and Washington where they risk being locked out as well.
Sightline reports that state legislators are preparing legislation to take the Seattle RCV system statewide. Expect California lawmakers to follow.
Note: Last week, House Republicans unveiled their new “Make Elections Great Again” (sic) legislation HB 7300, which is being criticized from across the spectrum for its federal takeover of elections and banning various state innovations. In clear service of coercing voters into a two-party system, it would require single-choice elections in all federal general elections. That would mean no more ranked choice voting in federal elections in Alaska, Maine, and DC, and no chance to consider RCV, approval voting, “STAR” voting, and Condorcet voting in any state. That said, it would not prevent use of RCV in primaries like this proposed use in California.
Takoma Park’s right to vote resolution led to it becoming the 1st American city to extend voting rights to 16-year-olds. Source: Vox
When at FairVote, I took great pride in our leadership in lifting up the proposal of a right to vote in the Constitution. It was featured in our ambitious 2003 Claim Democracy conference, and we worked with the Advancement Project and leaders like Jesse Jackson, Jr., Donna Brazile and Jamie Raskin on an amendment bill that one year drew sponsorship of the entire Congressional Black Caucus.. As the right to vote faces new threats, the case for the amendment is all the more compelling, as argued persuasively in law professor Rick Hasen’s important 2024 book A Real Right to Vote: How a Constitutional Amendment Can Safeguard American Democracy.
I was reminded of the importance of working for a right to vote amendment when listening to an interview conducted by my colleague Eveline Dowling for Expand Democracy’s podcast The Democracy Lab. On platforms like Apple Podcasts and Spotify, the Lab deserves a general shoutout, as we’ve had great guests and conversations. Eveline’s conversation with author Jefferson Cowie was no exception. Eveline and Jefferson unpack arguments in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book Freedom’s Dominion, and how calls for “freedom” can mask attacks on human rights and voting rights.
Cowie, in the podcast, returns repeatedly to his belief that Americans should be campaigning for a right to vote in the Constitution. My experience has been that the goal of constitutional change can feel remote to activists in the trenches of current fights to preserve voting rights. But Cowie argues that we must win this basic argument as part of claiming democracy at all levels of government.
As FairVote understandably began to focus on the case for ranked choice voting and proportional representation, other key priorities like the right to vote amendment and the National Popular Vote plan were left to others. But there is one orphaned project that I believe would be exciting for someone to adopt: the Promote Our Vote project that still has an active website, if not an active leader.
The home page details the project’s vision: “It’s time for an intervention: Voters in local elections are not reflective of their communities. Local elections have the lowest voter turnout rates and the highest levels of discrimination. Promote Our Vote gets at the heart of this problem by empowering localities, organizations, and campuses to raise turnout, protect access, and expand suffrage in the spirit of establishing a Constitutional Right to Vote.”
The project called for communities, colleges and organizations to pass a right to vote resolution, explaining: “Resolutions serve as a statement of principle for localities, campuses, organizations and other individuals and communities. A Right to Vote Resolution maintains that voting is a fundamental right in a democracy. It calls for an explicit right to vote in the Constitution and establishes a task force to explore measures that improve voter turnout, protect voter access, and expand suffrage. Resolutions may include support for additional pro-voting policies and practices, but must contain a call for a right to vote in the Constitution and a task force on pro-voting policies and practices.”
My hometown of Takoma Park (MD) passed such a resolution in 2013, and it truly was transformative. In the more elevated place that the resolution inspired, most city councilors drew on their own experience to propose changes that become law. One councilor talked about people saying they couldn’t vote due to a previous felony conviction. Another detailed how hard it was to campaign in large apartment buildings and talk to tenants as much as homeowners. A third talked about how residents getting interested late in the campaign might not be registered to vote. A fourth talked about how city teenagers were often interested in local government, but were too young to vote.
The result was an historical set of actions. Already a pioneer with ranked choice voting and immigrant voting, Takoma Park became the first city in the United States to extend voting rights to 16-year-olds, with data in subsequent elections showing that more 16- and 17-year-olds started voting than all 18-to-29-year-olds combined. Takoma Park extended voting rights also to residents with felony convictions and changed the code to require landlords to offer chances for candidates in all elections to be able to knock doors in apartment buildings. Ultimately, it consolidated its election date with federal and state elections in even years.
Imagine such a Promote Our Vote campaign around the country today: Building support for a right to vote amendment that is more needed than ever, but also generating concrete change in communities, on campuses and within organizations across the country. This orphan is ready for a new parent!
Avoiding Top 2 Primary Lockouts, Promoting Our Vote, Timely Links was first published on The Expand Democracy 3 and was republished with permission.
Rob Richie leads Expand Democracy. As head of FairVote, he created the partisan voting index, designed Alaska’s Top Four system, and advanced the Fair Representation Act, the National Popular Vote, automatic voter registration, and ranked-choice voting.
