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| OPEN SEASON | |
 February 2000 
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Are open primaries a fair means of choosing a party's nominee? Louisiana State Law Professor John Baker and University of Iowa Political Science Professor Rebecca Morton answer your questions. |
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Aine
Cryts of Boston, MA, asks: I think open primaries are a great idea. I believe they go a long way towards opening up the whole process. It does bring out more people to vote -- and takes some of the power over the process away from the party elites. Honestly, whatever it takes to get people involved in the political process is well worth it. Do the professors agree with this assessment?
Rebecca
Morton responds: In order to address these issues, I'd like to first be clear about the differences between primary systems which are more subtle than just "open" versus "closed." Open primaries do not require voters to declare a party affiliation before the primary election day, although many open primary states require voters to make such a declaration when they vote. A direct primary is closed if voters must declare their party affiliation some time before the election. Some states, such as Massachusetts, hold semi-closed primaries, which means that previously unaffiliated voters (independents) can participate. We can thus think of primaries as varying in how much they allow voters to participate. Closed primaries (only previously registered party members can participate) are the most limiting, then semi-closed primaries are next (allowing independents as well as party members), then open primaries (all voters choose a party's primary on election day). One state, Louisiana, holds completely non-partisan elections. It is true that at the face of it, opening up primaries as in semi-closed and open primaries does make political participation easier and could result in greater turnout. In New York state, a closed primary state, for example, potential voters must be registered as party members a year in advance of a primary election. In comparison, Massachusetts, a semi-closed primary state or Iowa, an open primary state, turnout is much less costly. Hence, we would expect higher voter turnout in semi-closed and open primary systems than closed ones simply for that reason. Yet, this basic reasoning is not well supported by a simple analysis of the data. A comparison of mean voter turnout levels in Democratic and Republican Congressional primaries shows that they are in general lowest in semi-closed and while somewhat higher for Democratic primaries in open than in closed systems, the difference is not substantial. Why doesn't opening up primaries clearly increase voter participation? The answer is that more is involved than just the costs of voting. In general, the individualized benefits of political participation are very small since one voter is unlikely to have much of an effect on the electoral outcome. However, for a group of like-minded voters (voters who share a common policy preference or perspective) turnout as a group can have a substantial effect on an election outcome. Political elites or leaders of such groups (parties, interest groups, sometimes independent candidates) mobilize voters to turnout in order to achieve group benefits as perceived by the leaders. Sometimes the group benefits may be simply getting the party or a particular candidate in office, other times it may be to affect a particular policy issue. Mobilization involves the provision of individualized benefits to voters from the group (acceptance, benefits tied to participation in a group goal, etc. or participation in helping a charismatic leader) to offset the individual cost. One reality of American politics since World War II is the decline in the role that parties have played in mobilizing voters and the increase in mobilization by interest groups and candidates themselves. Some political scientists have contended that this also explains the decrease in voter turnout over this period. Thus, just making voting easier does not mean that participation will increase but depends on whether these voters are effectively mobilized to participate. Mobilization by group leaders is likely to be strongly affected by the competitiveness of races and the benefits derived to the group leaders. Primary contests are not always desired by party leaders, and they may not even wish to mobilize voters in these contests. If voters are mobilize to support a losing candidate in the primary they may be less likely to support the winner from the primary in the general election, either not voting in the general, or voting for the opposition. Mary Catalan, the political director of President George Bush's reelection campaign in 1992, describes how ugly primaries can get: "Primary fights are a lot more emotional, corrosive, and painful than general elections. It's easy to hate Democrats, but brother-against-brother in the primaries gets really ugly. It's like the Civil War." To the extent that party leaders mobilize voters in primaries, they will seek out those partisans who are most likely to support their preferred candidates and/or less likely to be disaffected from the party in the general election. The party leaders who have mobilized voters in the presidential primaries this year have generally focused on core partisans for this reason, knowing also that these voters are more likely to follow the party leader endorsements of Bush and Gore. When primaries are more open, then party leaders' control over who participates is diminished, as Aine suggests. Thus their power over mobilization and participation is decreased. Candidates, not generally endorsed by these leaders, like McCain and Bradley, can appeal to independent or crossover voters. Yet, this does not mean that the voters will necessarily turnout as mobilization of these types of voters is often more difficult than for partisans. Candidates like Bradley and McCain face a tough battle to energize voters who are not generally interested in politics or to get endorsements from uncommitted group leaders who can mobilize voters. But it is possible as McCain has shown in Michigan, for example. A bigger question is whether more open primaries leads to more participation in all elections, not just primaries. The effect of increased participation in primaries on voter participation in general elections is unclear. There is the potential that these voters, mobilized in primaries, will be turned off by the divisive nature of the campaign and fail to participate in general elections as party leaders fear. Moreover, the more frequently elections are held, the less likely voters are to vote (as the resources used by groups and candidates to mobilize voters in multiple elections are drained). If McCain loses the nomination, for example, will some of his supporters, recruited in an open primary, simply not participate in the general election and might have otherwise? On the positive side, there is evidence that votes who participate for the first time in a primary remain active in the succeeding general election. To the extent that McCain and Bradley supporters in the more open primaries are new voters, then this may increase the general level of participation in American elections. In conclusion, more open primaries can lead to greater participation in primary elections, but it is an uphill battle for candidates who choose to appeal to non party members. And whether this increased participation leads to greater participation in the electoral process in general is still an open issue.
John
Baker responds: Aine, your concern about elites has been a common theme in American political and constitutional debate. Your question raises matters that are important to the other questions as well. So I will provide some more background that I consider useful in thinking about the issue of participation. Historically, the origin of American parties and then divisions within the parties have been the result of policy disagreements or dissatisfaction with the leadership, i.e., the "elites." This phenomenon, however, has not been peculiar to political parties; it has affected all kinds of volunteer social, business, cultural, and religious organizations. In any of these organizations, a group of people that is relatively small compared to the total membership almost always runs the organization unless there is a system of mandatory rotation requiring virtually everyone to take a turn in office. Parties are both the blessing and the curse of political liberty. In democratic countries, we take for granted the ability to create new and to alter existing parties. Nevertheless, democracy always produces a certain dissatisfaction with parties because they reflect and often foster division in society. That is to say, a party reflects the political preferences of a group of like-minded people who are seeking to implement their policies by electing their members to office. If everyone agreed on the same policies, parties would not exist. Since the beginning of the nation, one view of democracy has assumed it was desirable and possible to reach a high degree of consensus among the citizens at large and avoid divisions into parties. The Founders who held this view, however, recognized that such a high degree of consensus, which they thought necessary for democratic self-government, was possible only in small, relatively homogenous republics. In small republics, following the example of ancient Greece, rotation in office was possible. Those Founders who desired a confederation of such small republics were generally among the Antifederalists, i.e., those who opposed the Constitution. They criticized the Constitution for creating too complex a federal system with too powerful a national government and for allowing too large a country. As a result of this, they characterized those who supported ratification of the Constitution (the Federalists) as elitists. James Madison wrote in The Federalist (Essay No. 10) that the Constitution is based on the assumption that political liberty will unavoidably produce "factions," i.e., special interests. Madison and his fellow Federalists understood that factions endanger stable self-government. They also realized, though, that liberty to form one's own opinions and to pursue one's own interests was vital to the Republic, and that eliminating factions meant eliminating that individual liberty interest. In resolving this issue, Madison articulated the approach on which the Constitution is premised, namely that factions cannot be eliminated without also eliminating liberty and that therefore the solution was to control their bad effects by multiplying factions or special interests so that they check each other -- an application of the divide-and-conquer strategy. This multiplication of special interests is the basis for what has become known as pluralism, which as understood by Madison applies not only to religious liberty but to all matters on which people have different opinions and interests. Bringing out more people to vote may or may not be a good policy, depending on other considerations which I discuss in response to Question No. 4.
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