Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Push for open primaries in St. Louis is good for the country

Opinion

St. Louis

"Election reform only makes sense if it helps real people dismantle barriers and create a better future together," argue Jessie Fields and John Opdycke.

Lighvision, LLC/Getty Inmages

Fields is on the board of Open Primaries, a national election reform organization that advocates for open and nonpartisan primary systems. Opdycke is its president.

Open Primaries recently endorsed the STL Approves campaign in St. Louis for approval voting and nonpartisan primaries. It's an important effort, not just for the city, but for the country.

We join local community and civil rights leaders including City Treasurer Tishaura Jones, Democratic Party Committeeman Rasheen Aldridge, the Rev. Darryl Gray, the League of Women Voters, Show Me Integrity and the Center for Election Science in endorsing this initiative.

St. Louis is one of only a few remaining major cities — New York, Philadelphia, Houston, Louisville, Indianapolis, Charlotte and Washington are the others — that conduct partisan municipal elections. It's a lousy system. Candidates must first win a partisan primary, and then compete in a general election. More than 80 percent of cities conduct nonpartisan elections and let all voters vote for whomever they want in both the first and second rounds. Like many cities completely dominated by one party, the only election that counts in St. Louis is the Democratic primary; whoever wins the Democratic Primary is the de facto winner.


STL Approves is gathering signatures in hopes of getting a referendum on the ballot next April. It wants to change the status quo using a one-two punch:

  • End partisan primaries and replace them with an open, nonpartisan primary in which all voters vote and all candidates compete.
  • Institute approval voting, an innovative form of voting where citizens "approve" of as many candidates as they want.

Every voter gets to participate in round one, not just Democrats, and they get to choose from among all the candidates: Democrats, Republicans, Greens and independents. Voters get to do something new — hallelujah — which is approve of candidates. The two who have the most approval advance from the first to the second round. The ultimate winner will have won the broad support of the city's voters.

The new system is all about the voters and the candidates, not about the parties. Let all voters participate in every round. Give them new tools with which to cast ballots. Let candidates campaign to everyone and earn a majority if they want to serve. It's a win-win for voters and candidates, and lose-lose for party elites who prefer an outdated system that gives them maximum control.

The current system is woefully out of sync. Many candidates in St. Louis win primaries with less than 40 percent support and then coast to victory in noncompetitive general elections. If enacted by the voters, the new system will encourage more involvement and higher turnout. And with it, a more representative and democratic political culture in St. Louis.

Our organization is endorsing this effort for two important reasons.

First, there is a national conversation about electoral innovation that is accelerating, which is very positive. But improvements to how we vote work best when all voters can participate. In St. Louis, not everyone can participate in round one, which is the only round that counts. Only Democrats can. Republicans, third-party members and independents are forced to choose a Democratic ballot or be frozen out. At a time when independents are the fastest growing segment of the electorate, voting arrangements that treat these voters as second-class citizens are outdated and have to go. The STL Approves campaign will bring approval voting to the city and make sure that everyone can vote in the elections.

There's another reason we are endorsing this measure. St. Louis is a majority-minority city with a prominent black community and a history of both civil rights advancements and ongoing inequality, tension and frustration. When the protests in neighboring Ferguson are over and the policing reforms (such as they are) are implemented, the question of how to empower the marginalized and create a voting system that encourages bridge building and cross-community coalitions remains.

Election reform only makes sense if it helps real people dismantle barriers and create a better future together. We think STL Approves is doing just that.

Read More

U.S. President Barack Obama speaking on the phone in the Oval Office.

U.S. President Barack Obama talks President Barack Obama talks with President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan during a phone call from the Oval Office on November 2, 2009 in Washington, DC.

Getty Images, The White House

‘Obama, You're 15 Years Too Late!’

The mid-decade redistricting fight continues, while the word “hypocrisy” has become increasingly common in the media.

The origin of mid-decade redistricting dates back to the early history of the United States. However, its resurgence and legal acceptance primarily stem from the Texas redistricting effort in 2003, a controversial move by the Republican Party to redraw the state's congressional districts, and the 2006 U.S. Supreme Court decision in League of United Latin American Citizens v. Perry. This decision, which confirmed that mid-decade redistricting is not prohibited by federal law, was a significant turning point in the acceptance of this practice.

Keep ReadingShow less
Hand of a person casting a ballot at a polling station during voting.

Gerrymandering silences communities and distorts elections. Proportional representation offers a proven path to fairer maps and real democracy.

Getty Images, bizoo_n

Gerrymandering Today, Gerrymandering Tomorrow, Gerrymandering Forever

In 1963, Alabama Governor George Wallace declared, "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever." (Watch the video of his speech.) As a politically aware high school senior, I was shocked by the venom and anger in his voice—the open, defiant embrace of systematic disenfranchisement, so different from the quieter racism I knew growing up outside Boston.

Today, watching politicians openly rig elections, I feel that same disbelief—especially seeing Republican leaders embrace that same systematic approach: gerrymandering now, gerrymandering tomorrow, gerrymandering forever.

Keep ReadingShow less
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