Krist Novoselić: My efforts to reform the Democratic Party

RCV offers a chance for parties to reinvigorate themselves. But parties are failing to take advantage

I am a longtime advocate for political parties, and see their potential to get us out of our current polarization and resulting domination by elites. Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) has potential to reinvigorate grassroots political association in the United States, while at the same time offer voters real choices. In particular, the use of ranked ballots allows for more opportunities for engagement and cross-associations among political actors.

Political Association

I was involved in the effort to get Ranked Choice Voting used in Pierce County, Washington in 2008. This effort took advantage of widespread voter discontent with recently implemented partisan primary ballots. This situation, along with a surprising legal ruling at the state level to institute a “Top 2” election system for all state and federal races, greatly affected how RCV was soon repealed in Pierce County (I will cover more about the special circumstances of that repeal in Part 2, to be published at a later time).

In Pierce County, whose largest city is Tacoma (population 219,000), RCV was used for single-winner races, including within the county council, the governing body elected from single-seat districts. This is the usual winner-take-all implementation of RCV in the United States. However, RCV in Pierce was unique in regards to political association, as parties nominated their candidates under their own rules and methods.

Nominating candidates for the ballot is the fundamental reason for a political party to exist. The candidate is the ambassador to voters, of the party’s needs and values. Before RCV in Pierce, parties had ceased being actual political associations. Instead they had become elite-driven organizations in which even active political members like myself were ignored (as I will show below). The party was little more than a PO Box, a website and a bank account controlled by “leaders.”

The United States is unique among democracies with how the various states monopolize party nominations. RCV is spreading in our country, however it is still tied to the old idea of limiting the party system. For example, RCV has been implemented alongside several different systems of candidate nomination, including partisan primaries, nonpartisan (open) ballots, or in Alaska, Washington and California, "prefers party" disclaimers which appear on the ballot and state that the candidates listed are not endorsed by any political party.

How an election system handles political association has been central to political battles in Washington State, well before RCV was passed in Pierce County.

Enter Top 2

From 1935 through 2004, Washington had a so-called “blanket primary.” With this system, a voter from any political party or an independent could vote for any candidate they wished. The top vote-getter from each major party, alongside minor party and independent candidates, advanced to the general election. This gave voters maximum electoral freedom, and preserved the structure of having one candidate each from every political party on the November ballot.

But then the US Supreme Court invalidated the blanket primary. In 1996, California voters had passed a version of it but it was soon sued by the major political parties in California Democratic Party v. Jones, and the plaintiff parties prevailed. Consequently, Washington State also lost its longstanding blanket primary system.

With the blanket primary gone, Democrats and Republicans in Washington, by way of the state legislature, instituted exclusive party primary ballots. Voters had to now, colloquially, “Pick A Party” and vote only in that party’s primary. This confinement to a “closed primary” was unpopular with voters who for decades were used to open choices on their primary ballot.

The Washington State Grange, sponsors of the 1935 initiative and in which I am a longstanding member, offered a new kind of blanket primary. In 2004 voters passed ballot Initiative 872, rejecting the Pick A Party primary preferred by the Democratic and GOP leaders. Under this new system, called a “Top 2” primary, only the top-two vote getters, regardless of party, advanced to the general election. And candidates were not running as endorsed by a political party but as individuals, yet they were allowed to put “prefers Party X” next to their name on the ballot. The political party itself had no control over who adopted their label. That candidate could in fact be ideologically unaligned with the views of the “preferred party,” yet still be allowed to adopt its name. It has great potential for abuse, such as fake candidates from one party running from another party to split that party’s vote, which apparently happened in a California senate race.

This makes the candidate — not the party — paramount. The "preferred" party — on the ballot itself — does not have a chance to rebut the self identifying candidate claiming its endorsement.

While this method resurrected voter choice in the primary, other choices offered from the old system are gone. In particular, the general election ballot in November no longer features independents and third party candidates alongside the two major parties because smaller parties and independents rarely finish in the top two.

That became the new way for how candidates advanced. The associational component of party primaries — namely, how the ballot dealt with party cues as aids to voters — quickly turned into a landscape of constant legal battles.

Serving a Bowl of “Prefers Party”

Some political parties decided to strike back. The respective state Libertarian, Republican and Democratic Parties still wanted their Pick A Party closed primary, so they sued to block the Top 2 system. Their facial challenge succeeded all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States. The high court then surprised legal experts by overturning the lower courts and upholding Washington’s Top 2 primary.

Justice Thomas wrote for the 7-vote majority in Washington State Grange v. Washington State Republican Party. However, the nuts and bolts with implementation are found in a concurring opinion from Justices Roberts and Alito. The justices stated that these ballots pass constitutional muster by way of comparing political association cues next to a candidate’s name to someone preferring a can of Campbell's soup.

Krist and Andy

However, Alito and Roberts wrote that they wanted to see this system in action, and an accumulation of electoral history, before considering whether to invalidate it. But that did not settle it. Soon after the March Grange decision, the Democrats and Republicans rolled the legal dice again, this time filing an as-applied challenge. To succeed legally, the parties now had to demonstrate how Top 2 disclaimers harmed the right of association. So they set about trying to gather evidence and foster the conditions that would prove the harm.

The Democratic state chair told the various state organizations they had to nominate their own candidates. By doing this the party, as a private association, will have “expressed” itself, and the state, with its ballot disclaimer allowing self-identification, would have usurped this right (or so it would be argued). The Chair was serious about the need for evidence for the legal proceedings and told the rank and file, "If you don't nominate candidates, I will do it for you". Of course, the idea was not to empower the grassroots through free association; rather, the respective party establishments needed evidence in court to get their exclusive partisan primary ballots back.

What irony how the Chair, like a true party boss, virtually at the snap of a finger, granted the various Democratic Party groups power.

RCV and Parties

In the state of Washington, where I live, Precinct Committee Officers (PCO) are constitutional officers. Under their state chair’s decree, local Democratic organizations relied on PCOs to nominate candidates. I was very active in the state Democratic Party Central Committee in 2008 — I was Chair of my county party, and was an elected PCO for my precinct.

PCOs are elected on the primary ballot from over 1000 precincts in the state. PCO elections, along with US President, are the only exclusive partisan ballots in Washington elections, utilizing a ballot featuring a voter declaration of affiliation with the party. PCOs are basically elected by their neighborhood.

In my rural county group, nominations were a breeze as races were uncontested. Other party groups, with multiple candidates, experienced messy nominations. In some places, after PCOs nominated the party standard bearer, those who lost the PCO elections expressed hurt feelings, unsettling local organizations.

Pierce County had many contested public elections, especially for high profile races such as an open seat for County Executive. In this situation, Democratic PCOs used RCV to solve their problem of messy nominations. They nominated multiple candidates for the public ballot. The use of RCV helped increase the engagement of voters and fostered the power of association. That’s because ranked ballots allow for more opportunities for engagement and cross-associations among political actors. There were many races that featured two Democrats, alongside a GOP challenger. The GOP did not change their rules and only nominated single candidates for the RCV ballot.

Maximizing Voter Choice

Let me offer a great example of how RCV fostered the power of association, while at the same time expanded voter choice. Pierce County elects a County Executive, which is like the governor of the county. This office now was elected using a single RCV race in November. Democrats stood two candidates for County Executive; the county auditor Pat McCarthy and state legislator Calvin Goings. McCarthy was the centrist, while Goings ran as the union-supported candidate. There was also a Republican and an independent, so the general election ballot featured four candidates representing a broad range of political opinion. Voters had choices.

Here is how the single November election RCV ballots were tabulated in that race: In the first round, there was no majority winner, with the GOP frontrunner having only 35% of the vote, and the second and third place Democrats separated by only 3%. The independent came in last (though with a significant 15% of the vote), so his voters' 2^nd and 3^rd choices were redistributed to the remaining candidates.  That still resulted in no majority winner. Following that round, the battle between the 2^nd and 3^rd place Democrats played out. With the Democrat Goings in 3rd place, his preferences were distributed overwhelmingly to the other Democrat, McCarthy, who then passed the GOP frontrunner and won the election.

Scholars Todd Donovan, Matt Barreto and Loren Collingwood conducted a study of this election, An assessment of ranked choice voting in Pierce County, WA. (2009), which provides a rundown of how the partisan RCV ballots performed in Pierce County with all races. The political science paper concluded that RCV "mirrored the primary / general dynamic" but succeeded in finishing the election in one ballot instead of two. Democrats, who offered to voters multiple candidates from their party, did not split a single race, and in fact their “voter coalition” allowed the Democrat McCarthy to close the 8.5% gap with the GOP candidate and prevail.

Party Killers

While voters were empowered by the expanded choices, political elites quickly had their knives out for RCV. Dominant forces, like the unions supporting Goings, were not happy with their candidate finishing third. Under both the “closed primary" and Top 2 system, they would have likely knocked centrist Democrat McCarthy out in the primary — when the turnout is lower and the more activist voters participate. I am confident to speculate, since the unions ran the only negative ad in the RCV County Executive race, and it was against the other Democrat! (it is as if they could not break old habits.)

The GOP wasn’t happy because their initially frontrunning candidate lost. The winner McCarthy also stated opposition to how parties had to nominate candidates in this new system. This opposition to political association was widespread among elites, who could compare the new Top 2 ballot used in other elections, such as in state and federal races. This was a key dynamic of the RCV repeal effort that was about to emerge — the hated Pick A Party closed primary was gone, and voters in Pierce County could now use a wide-open primary again by getting rid of RCV and adopting the Top 2.

Many of the Democrats’ rank and file also started opposing RCV, yet their argument was RCV gave parties too much power! They were in favor of Top 2 because they did not like nominating candidates, and RCV required them to. Having used the blanket primary for so many decades, the Top 2 seemed like a “good enough” return to the familiar.

Unfortunately, this attitude seems like a general rule in American politics. Prof. Seth Masket, in his excellent tome The Inevitable Party: Why Attempts to Kill the Party System Fail, and How they Weaken Democracy, says parties are viewed by most people as corrupt organizations. The study is about how special interests gain power through the vacuum left by weakened party groups. Masket adds that political actors can find willing allies in the American people if they frame their reform proposals as curbing the power of parties. (Read my review of Masket’s book here https://deepriverdispatch.com/essay/books/perspect2.html)

My Party Time

As Chair of my county Democratic Party, and as an elected PCO, I attended a state committee meeting in early 2009 after what I considered a successful Pierce RCV election. Yet I was dismayed to find widespread misunderstanding and rumors about this new election system. There was no support from even the Pierce County delegation. They understood how it worked, but never bothered to think about why it was good for democracy or even for the Democratic Party. And they would not listen to what I had to say on the subject.

I tried to understand their viewpoint, realizing I was involved with a group that, for generations, had never nominated candidates for the ballot. There was simply no culture, sensibility, or among some members, energy to harness the power of association. For me personally,  a political party that doesn’t want to act like a party and nominate candidates was like a bicycle club which never goes on a ride, instead just sits around and talks about bikes.

Top 2 is a wrecking ball against political association. On the other hand, RCV, as implemented in Pierce County, was a lifeline. Nevertheless, the party folks did not see that. The Pierce Democrats had no idea about the potential for political association that RCV offered.

This was disappointing because, as a way of reviving the grassroots of the Democratic Party faithful, I had been advocating an unassembled caucus / firehouse primary system within the party. That is a candidate-nominating contest funded and overseen by a local party organization rather than public election administration officials. I traveled to other party groups in the state to speak at their meetings about the firehouse primary. The idea was for PCOs, who are accountable to voters in their neighborhood, to set up polling locations in their communities for those who feel aligned with the party to come in and cast a ballot to nominate candidates. I found this simple idea to be over the heads of many Democratic leaders and members.

I quietly quit the Washington Democratic Central Committee soon after my convention experience. I resigned for other reasons too, but I did not want to be in the bike club that refused to ride.

Eventually, after I had left, Democrats voted to stop using their archaic and frustrating presidential caucus, to instead adopt the party-exclusive state presidential primary ballot. I wonder if even a single party member argued to change caucus rules more along the lines of the firehouse primary I had advocated?

Top 2 Wins the Day

The appeal of the Supreme Court decision allowing the Top 2 to go forward lost in the federal district court in Washington. The judge just followed the Grange decision precedent. While Party leaders and other elites grumbled over seeing Top 2 in action, they identified this as a system they could work with. At the end of the day, it was not much different from the old blanket primary.

RCV had another good election in 2010 with a couple of races in Pierce. Nevertheless, it could not withstand the gossipy negative impressions, collusion of Democrats and Republicans, unions and other elites. The dreaded Pick A Party was gone, and in the afterglow of the new Top 2 system, RCV was repealed in the same election. (I have a lot more to share about this in the upcoming Part 2 of the story.)

Which was really a tragedy, not only for voters but for the political parties themselves. RCV in Pierce County was unique with its powerful grassroots associational component. As previously stated, RCV in the United States currently works in a number of primary contexts, including partisan primaries, nonpartisan ballots, or in "prefers party" ballot disclaimers. Reformers need to make more apparent how RCV can unleash the potential of political association, even as it offers maximum choice to voters. The use of ranked ballots allows for many more opportunities for engagement and cross-associations among political actors.

2008 was a long time ago. People forget history. RCV will be back in Washington. In fact, recently Seattle voted overwhelmingly with 76% of the vote to use RCV in its local primaries. In nearby Oregon, state Democratic Party leaders have led an exciting effort to put RCV on next year’s ballot, which will give voters maximum choice. Democrats and Republicans in other states hopefully will follow Oregon’s lead. There is no greater army than an idea whose time has come.

Krist Novoselić