We’ve Solved Polarization!

It’s True — Read All About It

Some 87 percent of Americans are tired of how divided we are politically.

Here in Massachusetts, we’ve at last discovered how to get the two parties onto the same page. It turns out to be simple. Challenge their political duopoly — also known as the two-party doom loop, as political scientist Lee Drutman puts it — and the two parties will stand shoulder to shoulder.

The two-party duopoly is a self-reinforcing dynamic that locks politics into cycles of partisan escalation that deepen voter alienation and institutional gridlock. Low-turnout party primaries, gerrymandering, and excessively restrictive rules on party formation established by the duopoly are among the contributing factors.

In my home state of Massachusetts, a group for which I’m the convening chair, the Coalition for Healthy Democracy, is tackling that doom loop with a ballot initiative to do away with traditional party primaries and replace them with an all-party primary. In an all-party primary, all candidates from all parties run on the same first ballot. Voters pick their favorite, and the top two vote-getters go on to the general election. Most Massachusetts cities already elect their mayors this way, so it’s a pretty familiar method. Alaska, Washington, and California also have an all-party primary.

Our initiative has some small additional elements that the municipal elections and other states don’t — endorsements can be printed on the ballot, and candidates can carry more than one endorsement, a form of fusion voting. The purpose is to make the ballots information-rich.

Here’s an example of what this kind of ballot would look like:

(Image courtesy of Coalition for Healthy Democracy)

This kind of election system does many positive things. It increases primary turnout. It moves the decisive election from the primary to the general, where turnout is vastly higher. It reduces the rate of incumbent retention. It speeds up diversification of state legislatures. And it increases the rate of competitive elections needed to hold public officials accountable and make our democracy responsive.

And guess what: The party establishments hate it. And they have the same complaints!

Although Massachusetts voters from every demographic group and both major political parties are net positive on this proposed reform, the state committees from both major parties have passed resolutions against it. What’s really surprising is that the chairs of both the Massachusetts GOP and the Massachusetts Democrats complain about the policy in nearly identical language:

MassGOP in a Monday statement said the system “would undermine core democratic principles by eroding the ability of political parties to select their own nominees, marginalizing smaller parties, stifling ideological diversity, suppressing general-election turnout, and amplifying the role of big money while disadvantaging grassroots efforts.”

And from MassDems: “We’ve seen the unintended consequences of all-party primaries in other states: general elections between two candidates from the same party, smaller parties shut out entirely, and grassroots candidates who simply can’t compete against self-funded opponents.”

Astonishing to see the sudden empathy of both major party leaders for third parties. They clearly didn’t check in with the Forward Party and Green Rainbow Party, which have both endorsed the measure.

Jaw-dropping to see the complaints about money from a GOP whose party has just endorsed a self-funding gubernatorial candidate in our current system, and when Elon Musk, Andrew Cuomo, and Tom Steyer have all just proved that a boatload of money comes up short in an all-party primary system. (Locally, Josh Kraft, son of Patriot’s owner Robert Kraft, also came up short in a self-funded bid for mayor of Boston, which uses a top-two election system).

Gob-smacking to see the concern for grassroots candidates in a state with a 99 percent incumbency retention rate. It literally can’t get any worse than it is.

The one thing our parties can agree on is that they want to keep our dysfunctional political system exactly as it is.

This means we now know precisely who and what have locked our current dysfunction in place: the party establishments, R and D. And on the Republican side, it’s a Trump establishment now.

So, Renovators: Here are the facts. There is no way out of our dysfunction other than to go through the fire of fighting it out with the party establishments. Can’t go over, can’t go under, can’t go around. Have to go through.

Are you with us?

Let’s roll.

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