Let's Vote Already; Putting an End to Primaries

Feeling frustrated by our two presidential candidates? Sick of the RATS, the attacks and campaign reporter pack? Wish we could just get over with it and vote already?

Start thinking about life without primaries.

Less than 10 percent of registered voters went to the polls in Massachusetts yesterday to vote in the state primaries, a record low. Who can blame them though when 93 of 160 state representatives and 21 of 40 state senators were running unopposed? The so-called election--do you still call it an election when there's only one name on the ballot?--wasted tens of thousands of dollars per district, money which paid for polling booths, ballot counting and bureaucracy.

The problem is the primaries.

Between municipal, state and federal elections and their primaries, American voters go to the polls at least once a year--this year Massachusetts residents will vote three times. With all this time spent voting, American voter turnout is abysmal. And while everyone has been trumpeting ideas to help bring disaffected voters back to into the booths--especially the young who, according to a recent IOP survey, distrust politics and politicians in record numbers--no one has suggested that people might simply be tired of politics. Politics as campaigning, that is.

People would vote more if they were made to vote less. In countries where voting happens only once every few years voter turnout is far more impressive than our dismal returns. In Britain, where voters face major elections only once every five or six years and have no primaries, turnout in the 1997 general election was a whopping 71.5 percent, according to The Guardian.

Primaries result in voter apathy because they inflate the already excessive time spent on the incredibly unproductive business of campaigning. Campaigning not only wastes politicians' time, but, because of its attack ads, its mud-slinging and its inflated promises, campaigning destroys voter trust. An extended campaign season leaves political reporters with little to write about except the occasional missteps of candidates on the trail and juicy gossip, none of which is really relevant to the issues of governance. The skeleton generally rises out of the closet in the beginning of a campaign--if you think back far enough the public was well aware of Clinton's philandering back before the New Hampshire primary in 1992. The current system leaves the public with a lot of time to forget about these flaws before any meaningful voting actually occurs.

Primaries also cost money. Over a two-year period, the 1996 presidential candidates spent $118.7 million. This year that figure may double. If campaign time was halved, the price of campaigning would drop dramatically.

If primaries really made America more democratic maybe we could accept them, even if they are wasteful and inefficient. But primaries aren't really democratic. The rallying cry against the evil forces of smoke-filled rooms and party machines was the infamous Hubert Humphrey nomination, when George McGovern was denied the nomination despite the public's support.

But the reality is that only a small minority of Americans actually participate in the primary selection process, as was so clearly demonstrated by yesterday's elections. According to Professor David King of the Kennedy School of Government, in 1966, 34 percent of eligible voters voted in primary elections. In 1988 the numbers had dropped to 17 percent of eligible voters. And in case you thought that primaries allow the common man a voice, King says that political moderates are staying away from the polls.

The main question, then, is whether we want to give power back to parties by allowing them to choose candidates and fund them (hopefully under new, stricter campaign finance laws), or whether we want to continue in the current descent towards candidate-driven elections where personality means more than policy and political extremists set the primary agenda (think Bob Jones University). Without a party to bind candidates to specific policies, clear goals and a coherent vision, candidates freewheel through campaigns on their smile, their handshake and their looks, catering to the extremists on either side before rushing to the middle--never mind the hypocrisy inherent in that.

Parties have been losing power as ticket-splitting voters become more prevalent. Candidates have developed their own networks of campaigners and fundraisers--primaries have become so front-loaded that a small number of voters, not party delegates, are picking candidates. Parties remain important conduits for funds to candidates, but they don't really bind them to an ideology anymore. This means that voters have a harder time deciding based on policy.

Without strong parties with clear ideologies, Americans lose out on substantive policy debates. The Green Party and the Reform Party for instance, have strong counterparts in Europe where parties have strength, but lack a significant voice in our elections. Without these parties playing a part in policy debates voters lose out.

Without primaries, all this will change. But for now, at least the politicians themselves are bravely soldiering on. Massachusetts voters decided to stay home, but Representative Alice K. Wolf of north and west Cambridge busily worked to get people out to vote. Seemingly oblivious to the waste of time, energy and money that were yesterday's primaries, her campaign headquarters were buzzing with activity, focused on beating the most inscrutable of political opponents--voter apathy.

Meredith B. Osborn '02, a Crimson executive, is a social studies concentrator in Leverett House.