As the Louisiana Legislature plans to double down on its use of semi-closed primaries in a special session to commence this week, Republican Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser managed to talk some nonsense about the electoral system.
Nungesser continues his long-standing opposition to this system with his preference being the blanket primary currently used to elect all local and legislative, single executive, and judicial except for the Supreme Court offices, under which he gained office. He alleged that closed primaries were a major force in divisive politics and would return the state to the blanket primary system for all contests.
(Note: the term “open” primary is carelessly used interchangeably by some, including Nungesser, with what actually is a “blanket” primary. Actually, an “open” primary has general election nominations decided by party primaries, where a voter regardless of affiliation picks one party’s primary in which to participate. A “blanket” primary is one where candidates run together regardless of affiliation where all voters regardless of affiliation may participate. A “closed” primary is one where only those affiliated with a party may participate only in that party’s primary. Louisiana’s semi-closed system for some offices allows voters not affiliated with either major party to participate in one major party’s primary along with that party’s affiliated voters.)
As evidence, Nungesser held out the two other blanket primary states (technically “top two” kinds which operate slightly differently that Louisiana’s version) California and Washington and Alaska with its single transferable vote system as models that he claimed reduced partisan rancor. Which, in his doing so, completely destroys his argument.
California, with an election system supposedly with moderating tendencies, sends 43 Democrats and only 9 Republicans to Washington, DC for the House both Senators are Democrats. All its statewide elected officials are Democrats, as are 60 of the 80 Assembly members and 30 of the 40 senators. Washington is hardly any more balanced: eight of ten members of Congress are Democrats and both senators, as are all of its elected statewide executives and 59 of its 98 House members and 30 of its 49 senators.
With partisan imbalances such as these, Democrats can afford to and do completely ignore Republicans in governance. Further, the most ideological extreme candidates often become elected because the top two candidates where there is some significant minority party strength in districts typically have fewer minority party candidates run and more conservative, whereas the majority party tends to have more candidates from among whom the most liberal makes the top two among with the less-contested conservative. And in very unbalanced districts regardless of dominant ideology, the most extreme ideologically usually triumphs because there are just too few minority party voters to vote or want to vote for a more moderate candidate of the majority party, if they even have that choice. (This summation is drawn from a description of several potential sources of the California top two system causing non-delivering of less extremism, here.)
Electoral system, regardless of rules, often is conditioned by external factors such as political culture, voter knowledge and interest, elite behavior, and rules of the game such as for party governance, nominations, finances, etc. And while Nungesser theorizes at the national level government could get more done if all states used blanket primaries for Congress, in a sense he’s right, as at the state level all of California, Louisiana, Washington state governments move without a lot of inter-party conflict – but because they are one-party states, not because of moderating tendencies.
Ultimately, electoral system matters little in policy output, and the level of conflict in government doesn’t necessarily matter itself. After all, a lot of conflict may be a good thing if the public desires a relatively quiescent government whose internal divisions stop it from acting. Meanwhile, closed primaries, because of the emphasis on party, create greater cohesion among the majority blessed with governance and actually can reduce conflict within the majority able to govern that ends up producing more action. So, disregard Nungesser’s musings that fail to recognize the complexity of democratic governance that itself reflects the complexity of human nature.
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