Election experts agreed that voter disenfranchisement was primarily the fault of closed primaries during a panel sponsored by USC’s Dornsife school on Tuesday afternoon.
The panel, entitled “Ranking Reforms: The Cure for the Ills of Democracy Is More Democracy,” was part of a full-day program by the USC Dornsife Center for the Political Future’s annual Warschaw Conference on Practical Politics. This year’s conference, which was held at USC’s Town & Gown, was titled “Democracy on the line? 2024 and Beyond.”
“The real challenge is the type of people being elected to office,” said Politico columnist Jonathan Martin.
A closed primary is when one can only participate if they are an eligible voter who is registered with that specific primary’s political party. Voter registration for states with closed primaries includes a party affiliation question, so independent voters are not able to participate.
Martin, the moderator of the discussion, questioned two panelists on why the Democratic and Republican parties do not want election reform.
“I think that both parties are okay with being 51% of a declining market share in this political duopoly,” said Nick Troiano, executive director of Unite America.
Troiano also emphasized the importance of three main election reforms: non-partisan primaries, ranked-choice voting and gerrymandering reform.
“Very extreme right and left candidates are winning elections, and now they don’t have to rely on the big traditional fundraising circles that they would normally have,” said Former Washington Secretary of State Kimberly Wyman. “That’s one of the things that’s the biggest challenges and needs structural reform.”
Troiano agreed with Wyman on campaign finance reform and also focussed on why election reforms would combat the disenfranchisement of independent voters in states with closed primaries. Troiano believed the reforms would be beneficial to both parties.
“The argument for Republicans is that you can stop losing state-wide if you start nominating more mainstream candidates,” Troiano said. “The argument to Democrats is this is the future voters that you can start courting at the primary level.”
Martin then questioned the effectiveness of non-partisan primaries even with gerrymandering reform in places like Seattle, where voters will “elect a democratic member of Congress no matter how you slice the county.”
“There’s not a lot you can do, and we’re kind of living in our own little silos geographically,” Martin said.
Ranked-choice voting was also discussed by the panelists as a possible reform to make voting measures more non-partisan.
“Many think that people of color stand a better chance, particularly women, in ranked choice. Do you agree with that?” asked a member of the audience during the question portion of the panel.
“They do find that it is advantageous to these communities in part because it deals with this issue of vote splitting,” Troiano said in response to the question. “After it was used in New York City, for example, that helped the city council become the most diverse, majority women council that they’ve had.”
Attendee Nivea Krishnan, a senior majoring in public policy and economics, said she enjoyed the final panel the most, out of the four hosted throughout the day.
“I’m doing my senior thesis on ranked-choice voting,” Krishnan said. “With today’s polarized landscape, it’s important to think of state legislation.”
Each panel held during the conference focused on a different topic, such as election disinformation and the upcoming 2024 presidential elections. Each discussion provided insight from a variety of expert speakers.
“There is nothing wrong with the way our democracy is functioning today, that our same democracy doesn’t give us the tools to fix,” Traiano concluded at the end of the conference.