In less than two weeks, the primary will happen in Massachusetts, where voters will head to the polls, select a ballot from one of the two officially recognized political parties, and choose the candidates they think should be the party’s nominees.
An effort is underway to change the way we conduct primary elections in Massachusetts and replace them with a system that’s sometimes called “an all-party primary,” or a “top two” primary.
Danielle Allen, convening chair of the Coalition for Healthy Democracy, joined GBH’s All Things Considered guest host Saraya Wintersmith to talk about why advocates are pushing to bring the change to Massachusetts primaries. What follows is a lightly edited transcript of their conversation.
GBH News is interviewing opponents of ballot Question 3 to run in the near future.
Saraya Wintersmith: So to start, we described the way primaries have worked with the two recognized parties conducting their separate contests before the general election. How would the all-party primary or top-two primary that your coalition is proposing work?
Danielle Allen: When a voter walks into the voting booth, they would get one ballot with all the candidates for each race, all the candidates from every party. So you’d see all those contested possibilities. You’d pick your favorite. Vote for one, and then the top two vote-getters would show up on the general election ballot.
Saraya: And your coalition has insisted that this move would increase competition and turnout in our elections, especially at the State House level. Can you say more about the thinking there? How do we figure that switching to an all-party primary would draw more political participation?
Danielle: Sure. So, two weeks from now, on Sept. 1, our upcoming primary day, most Massachusetts elections will already be over. Come November, there will be about three quarters of legislative districts without any real contest — either legislators are running unopposed or else the low turnout primary on Sept. 1 settled the race — and the general election is just a formality. In fact, we have the least competitive elections in the country. So, what this does is shift the decisive election from the primary to the general. That means instead of having the matter closed, essentially settled but for formalities, when just 20% of the electorate turns out — that’s the sort of rough rate of voting in September — instead, the actual decision, the decisive choice, is made in November when you have more like 70% of people turning out.
Saraya: I want to talk more about the shift that you’re referencing, but first, I think I read that there is a thought that this move would sort of level the playing field for independent and minor party candidates.
Danielle: So there are lots of benefits for independents and minor party candidates. They get to participate in that first ballot alongside everybody else. That brings them, the candidates, into the conversation at a point when the media is covering that primary. They don’t have to sit that out and wait until November, so that’s beneficial to them. And for voters, if you are an unenrolled voter currently, you have to pick one of the ballots, either a Dem ballot or a Republican ballot. Then that means you have to pick which contested election you’re gonna vote in. You can’t vote in all contested elections. If you take the current Sept. 1 primary, for example, there is a contested primary for the governor’s race on the Republican side, and there’s a contested race for the Senate on the Democratic side. So if you’re unenrolled right now, you have to decide, you know, which of those contested races am I going to vote in? On the all-party primary, everybody gets to vote in every contested race. So, you know, there will be more contested races. It will jumpstart competition and you won’t have to pick which contested races you vote in. You get to vote in everything. So, that will fully enfranchise unenrolled voters. Currently, in this situation where they have to pick a ballot, they do participate at lower rates than other voters do.
Saraya: And in terms of independent and minor party candidates, are we thinking that this would sort of level the playing field for them?
Danielle: Exactly. Yes. Currently there’s a set of really technical rules for what it takes for minor parties to count as parties. And this change actually reduces the barriers for them. They need a lower vote threshold to count as parties. So they should be able to maintain their party status and run candidates more easily. In addition, it’s also really important that on this all-party primary approach to elections, parties can still endorse a candidate and the candidate can have that endorsement show up on the ballot. That includes for minor parties. So when you go into that primary day election, you know, you might see, you know, three or four different candidates. You might see a Democrat who’s endorsed by the Democratic Party. You might see another Democrat who’s endorsed by the Working Families Party, for example. Now, when you can see that kind of information, it gives those third parties a chance to communicate broadly to the whole electorate about their candidates and about where they’re putting the work in. So that is a sort of, you know, it’s communication to the whole Commonwealth that the Working Families Party, for example, is doing this work around a candidate, and that does help level the playing field by providing that communication through the ballot to the whole Commonwealth.
Saraya: And I want to ask you about this because it’s actually one of the first things that came up as soon as I started talking about it with some of my friends and colleagues. Some people immediately refer to what you’re proposing as a “jungle primary,” and your group has a whole page dedicated to why that’s not the term you use. Can you explain that?
Danielle: Sure. So, the National Conference of State Legislatures has a whole kind of glossary of different state primary systems. Louisiana is the one state that has had what people call a jungle primary, and that mechanism is very specific. In that case, if somebody in the primary gets 50% of the vote, you just cancel the general election. The primary is all you have and that decides everything. Ours is the opposite of that. The whole point of our initiative is that those top vote-getters, even if somebody got 50% in the first round, they go to the general election where the bulk of the electorate will actually participate. That 70% of the electorate that shows up in November, that electorate is much more diverse. It’s younger than the primary electorate. So, one of the things we see with an all-party primary is it means politicians really have to face that whole electorate, they have to expect competition. That means they have to listen to voters, and they have to listen to an electorate that is younger and more diverse. We see diversification of state legislators. and state legislatures in states that have the all-party primary.
Saraya: Danielle, the opponents to your effort recently launched their campaign, and it includes some big names in Massachusetts politics: the AFL-CIO, the Massachusetts Democratic Party, and some local SEIU chapters. They’ve suggested that this move would give one party, the Republican Party, more decision power in elections and ensure that more moderates win elections. How are you addressing those ideas?
Danielle: Well, it’s interesting that one of the first people, in fact, to come out in opposition to this initiative was the Massachusetts GOP, the Republican Party. So Massachusetts GOP has a different view than what you just described. They do not see this as giving them an extra sort of access to power. And in fact, if we look around the country, it really is MAGA Republicans who are acting most aggressively to take this election system off the table. So, for example, right now Alaska has an all-party primary, and Elon Musk has just put $1.5 million into an effort to repeal it there.
Saraya: I want to go back to this idea of shifting the sort of rhythm of the election cycle that you mentioned before. Working in newsrooms, there’s always this sort looming question of whether the average voter is really tuned-in to candidates and the beats of the campaign system. Having an all-party primary would almost demand that shift in attention, and I think that could arguably make having more money to publicize a campaign a great advantage. How are you responding to that idea?
Danielle: Well, you know, I think I, like so many, think that money in politics is just a huge problem. Ever since Citizens United, we’ve seen floods of money into politics. We should all be concerned about money in politics. So I find it incredibly good news that this election system does not actually make it more expensive for people to run for office. We’ve scrubbed all the races in California and Washington State since they have started to use an equivalent to an all-party primary. In fact, the rate of victory for the top fundraiser has gone down since they started using all-party primaries.
Saraya: Finally, at last check, you had about $116,000 in the bank and a multiplatform social media campaign. What can voters expect from your coalition in the little more than 70 days we’ve got until they need to make a decision about this in November?
Danielle: We’re working really hard on public education. We’re looking forward to some public forums. We hope to do one with the League of Women Voters, for example. We continue to do briefings with Indivisible chapters around the commonwealth. We are eager to engage communities from all contexts. We hope to be doing briefings with Neighbor to Neighbor chapters. We hope to be doing briefings for additional labor unions. So, we have a big volunteer cohort and corps. They’re out there. They’ll be getting lawn signs all over the commonwealth. They worked really hard on signature gathering all through the spring, and so they’ll be continuing those conversations with neighbors and really showing up in communities so that people can see that there is just a huge degree of support around the commonwealth for this. One hundred thousand people signed signature papers in 348 out of 351 municipalities around the commonwealth. So our volunteers who made that happen are going to be out there talking to people, spreading lawn signs, and continuing to work on public education.
