FIVE NEW PAPERS ISSUED ON RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PRIMARY SYSTEMS AND POLARIZATION

During 2013, five new scholarly Political Science papers have been written that explore the relationship between the type of primary system and the degree of partisanship and polarization in Congress and state legislatures. Although political scientists started studying this subject in earnest in 1998, the year California’s blanket primary went into effect, the subject seems to be getting more attention than ever before.

Earlier studies were faulty because they often didn’t acknowledge that there are six types of primary used in U.S. elections. Some of these papers classed all primaries as either "open" or "closed". The 2013 papers don’t have that problem. Also, some of the earlier papers only studied a single state, whereas three of the new papers study the entire nation.

Vocabulary continues to be a problem for this subject. For the purposes of this article, the six types of primary have these names:

Closed primary: one in which only registered members of that party may participate.

Semi-closed primary: is similar to a closed primary, except that independent voters may participate.

Open primary, public choice: any voter is free to choose any party’s primary, but the voter has no privacy when he or she decides which primary ballot to choose.

Open primary, private choice: any voter is free to choose any party’s primary, and the choice is made in the secrecy of the voting booth.

Blanket primary: all voters get the same primary ballot and that ballot lists all candidates. The top vote-getter from each party advances to the general election.

Top-two primary: all voters get the same primary ballot and that ballot lists all candidates, and only the top two go on to the general election.

McGhee-Masket-Shor-Rogers-McCarty Paper

The paper with the most data is the one by Eric McGhee, Seth Masket, Boris Shor, Steven Rogers, and Nolan McCarty. It is on the Social Science Research Network (ssrn.com), and is titled, "A Primary Cause of Partisanship? Nomination Systems and Legislator Ideology." It will be published in the American Journalof Political Science.

This paper studies the relationship between type of primary system and state legislators, by using data on almost 18,000 legislators for 1992 through 2010. The data includes roll-call votes and responses to questionaires from Project Vote Smart. Each legislator in the study is thus identified by ideology (on a one-dimensional scale, liberal to conservative). Then, the study computes data for average Republican legislators, and average Democratic legislators, in each state. Finally, the study sorts the states by the type of primary system used.

The paper finds no correlation between type of primary system and the degree of polarization and partisanship in legislatures. It says, "The results of this analysis suggest that the openness of a primary election system has little to no effect on the ideological positions of the politicians it elects…The overall polarization is roughly the same across systems…An approach that gives open primaries as much credit as possible fails to confirm a simple moderating effect…The results suggest that these systems have little consistent effect on legislator ideology."

The concluding paragraph is, "Our analysis suggests we should expect little from open primary reform in the modern political age. The effect is inconsistent and weak, and where it is stronger and more robust, it is the opposite of the one that is generally intended."

Pages 28-30 explore possible reasons for the findings: (1) "the number of committed, politically active Independents may be smaller than expected"; (2) "the logic of an open primary is more complicated than it appears, since a moderating effect is dependent on a number of assumptions about the distribution of voter ideology and the pattern of candidate emergence in each race"; (3) "the critical role of donors and party activists" may be so strong as to outweight the effect of primary systems.

Norrander-Stephens-Wendland Paper

This paper, by Barbara Norrander, Kerri Stephens, and Jay L. Wendland, is "Primary Type, Polarization of State Electorates and the Ideological Composition of Primary Electorates." It was presented to the Midwest Political Science Association in April 2013. It attempts to determine whether it is really true or not that registered members of parties are more ideological and extreme than other voters.

To answer the question, the paper uses exit polling data from 2004 and 2008. Exit polls ask respondents about their ideology, and also their party identification.

The paper finds that the more closed the primary system is, the more moderate the party members are. This may be because pragmatic independents are more likely to register as party members in closed primary states, than in other states.

The most liberal Democratic voters are found in states with open-private primaries (i.e., primaries that are open and in which the voter chooses which party’s ballot to use in secret). The most conservative Republican voters are found in states with open-public primaries (states in which the voter chooses which party’s ballot to use but must do so publicly).

The paper also studies independent voters, and finds that independents who vote in partisan primaries are not the equivalent of that state’s median voter. Independents voting in Republican primaries fall the right of the median voter, and independents voting in Democratic primaries fall to the left of the median voter.

The paper concludes, "If further research confirms the patterns of this paper, the best advice for a long-term reduction in the polarization of the states’ partisan electorates is a return to more closed primaries."

Ahler-Citrin-Lenz Paper

This paper, by Doug Ahler, Jack Citrin, and Gabriel Lenz, is "An Experimental Test on the 2012 Primary". It ran on a political science blog, "The Monkey Cage" on March 27, under the name, "Can California’s New Primary Reduce Polarization?"

The experiment asked 2,839 randomly selected California voters to express their opinion about actual 2012 congressional and state senate elections in that voter’s district. All of the districts used were districts in which a moderate candidate faced a more ideological candidate. The experiment asked the subjects to choose whom they would have voted for. Half the subjects used a top-two primary system and half used a closed primary system. The results were that the moderate candidates fared no better among the subjects who used the experimental top-two primary ballot, than among the subjects who used an experimental closed primary ballot.

The subjects were also asked to rate each candidate on a conservative-liberal scale.

The results show that the typical voter was not informed about the ideology of candidates for Congress or state legislature, even though the subject was only being asked about candidates in his or her own district. The paper concludes by noting that the results imply that top-two primaries are not the cure for polarization that the system’s proponents had hoped for.

Kousser-Phillips-Shor Paper

This paper, by Thad Kousser, Jack Citrin, and Gabriel Lenz, is titled "Reform and Representation: Assessing California’s Top-Two Primary and Redistricting Commission." It was delivered at the Midwest Political Science Association in April and can be seen on ssrn.com.

The authors commissioned a poll to determine the attitudes of California voters toward 46 political issues. The same 46 questions had already been asked of members of Congress and the legislature, in questionaires distributed by ProjectVoteSmart.

Then, the authors compared the attitudes of voters with the attitudes of their elected officials, both for 2010 and 2012. In 2010, California had used a semi-closed primary; in 2012, a top-two primary. The authors wanted to see whether there is a better fit between voters’ attitudes and their elected representatives under one of these primary systems, relative to the other system.

The results showed that, to a small extent, the 2010 semi-closed primary did a better job of electing office-holders that match the views of voters toward issues. The study says, "If anything, California’s congressional candidates and eventual lawmakers became a bit more ideologically extreme, and thus moved further aprt from the average voter in their district, in 2012." Also, "The top-two primary has not halted the continuing partisan polarization of California’s elected lawmakers or their drift away from the average voter in each district. If anything, polarization has increased and the quality of representation has declined."

The paper suggests several reasons for this outcome. Under a top-two primary, major party leaders settle on a party favorite and try to "clear the field", to avoid the problem that if one major party has too many candidates in the primary, the vote for them may be split up so badly that the other major party (which may be the weaker party in the district) may capture both spots in the primary, and thus the stronger major party has no one on the November ballot. Another reason is that interest groups and major parties, with their ability to raise campaign contributions for favored candidates, have a disproportionate influence on candidate positions on the issues.

The paper pays special attention to 2012 races in which two members of the same party appeared on the general election ballot. It finds that in half the districts like this, the candidate who was closer to the median voter won; but in the other half of such races, that candidate lost.

Rogowski Paper

This paper, by Jon Rogowski, is titled, "Primary Systems, Candidate Platforms, and Ideological Extremity." This paper studied the campaign positions taken by over 2,500 major party congressional candidates from 1996 to 2006. It then grouped these candidates, to see if they were running in closed, semi-closed, open-public, open-secret, or blanket primaries. It then compared the positions of candidates with the type of primary they were running in. The paper does not have a separate category for top-two primaries, and excludes data for Louisiana.

The Paper says, "Relative to closed and semi-closed primaries, Democratic candidates in blanket primary states adopted more liberal platforms and Republican candidates adopted more conservative platforms, though the results are statistically significant only among Democratic candidates."

Thus, like the other papers, this paper found that blanket primaries do not create more moderate politicians.

However, the paper finds that open primaries are more likely to produce moderate office-holders than semi-closed or closed primaries.

The paper notes that other papers have come to different conclusions about closed primaries versus open and semi-closed primaries, and points out that other papers generally measure elected officials by their roll call votes. By contrast, this paper measures them by their platforms. It says, "The results in this paper should not be interpreted as an indication that restrictive primary rules contribute to increased party polarization."

Why These Papers Matter

The top-two system in California would not have passed in 2010, except that all but one of the state’s largest daily newspapers strongly editorialized in its favor, on the grounds that the top-two system would reduce polarization and partisanship. Thus, these recent Political Science studies may be influential, if California holds a future vote on whether to repeal the system.

A Note on Vocabulary

Most of the papers mentioned above use a different term for "Open Primary, Public Choice", the term B.A.N. uses in this article. Most of the papers use the term "semi-open" for that kind of primary. Also some of the papers refer to both top-two systems and blanket primaries as "Non-partisan" primaries.

The law on how a party remains on the New Mexico ballot says, "Section 1-7-2(c). A qualified party shall cease to be qualified if two successive general elections are held without at least one of the party’s candidates on the ballot or if the total votes cast for the party’s candidates for governor or president, provided that the party has a candidate seeking election to either of those offices, in a general election do not equal at least one-half of 1% of the total vote cast."

For the past sixteen years, this law has been interpreted to mean that if a party submits a party petition, it gets to be on the ballot for two elections. Both the Green Party and the Constitution Party submitted a petition for party status in 2012. They both ran candidates for President in 2012, and neither got as much as one-half of 1%.

But now Secretary of State Dianna J. Duran is interpreting the law to mean that a party goes off the ballot after just one election, if it fails to get the one-half of 1%. She finds authority for this action from an Attorney General’s Opinion written in 1992. However, the Opinion was not followed by Secretaries of State and Attorneys General during the period 1996 through 2012, because it seems flawed.

The law is poorly worded, but most neutral readers would probably agree that the phrase "two successive general elections" refers to both halves of the sentence, not just the first half.

In 2005, Secretary of State Rebecca Vigil-Giron ruled that both the Green Party and the Constitution Party were still on the ballot, even though both of them had run for President in 2004 and failed to poll one-half of 1%. The Attorney General approved her action. Also, in 2010, Secretary of State Mary Herrera left the Constitution Party on the ballot, even though it had last petitioned in 2008 and had run for President in 2008 and had not polled as much as one-half of 1%. She did not leave the Green Party on the ballot for 2010 because it had not petitioned since 1992 (it had met the vote test in 1994, 1996, 2000, and 2002, but had not met it since).

It is hoped that the Secretary of State will ask for a new Attorney General Opinion.

The Secretary of State still recognizes the Libertarian Party, because it polled over one-half of 1% for President last year (it polled 3.55%). She still recognizes the Independent American Party, which had no presidential candidate on the ballot last year.

On August 12, the Colorado Libertarian Party won its ballot access lawsuit in state court. The case had only been filed on August 7. The issue was whether candidates in the upcoming special State Senate elections should have until August 26 to file their petitions, or whether the petitions were due July 29. The State Constitution said the deadline should be the later deadline, but the statute required the earlier deadline. The case was Libertarian Party of Colorado v Gessler, Denver district court, 13cv-33491. The Democratic Party had intervened in the case on the side of the earlier deadline, and after the decision came out, the Democrats asked the State Supreme Court to review the case. However, that Court declined, so the case is over. The outcomes means that the party’s nominee for the State Senate election in Colorado Springs will be on the ballot, assuming his 600 signatures are valid. The special election is simultaneously a recall election.

During May 2013, Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler removed Americans Elect from the ballot, even though it had approximately 3,500 registered members, and even though the law says any party with at least 1,000 registered members is ballot-qualified. The Secretary of State says he removed it because the party’s national leadership wrote him a letter in August 2012 asking that the party be dissolved. The Secretary did not say why he waited so long to remove the party.

The Secretary had dutifully included Americans Elect in the monthly registration report for every month during 2013, except suddenly in the June 2013 report, it was missing. All of the Americans Elect registrants have been converted to independents, without any notification to them.

Three election law bills that had passed during July have been signed: the North Carolina omnibus election law bill, HB 589, signed on August 12 by Governor Pat McCrory; the District of Columbia bill legalizing out-of-district petitioners, B20-0245, signed by Mayor Vincent Gray on August 2; and the Illinois bill doubling the number of signatures for candidates for Chicago Alderman, HB 2418, signed by Governor Pat Quinn on July 29.

California: the Secretary of State will not ask the U.S. Supreme Court to hear Libertarian Party of Los Angeles County v Bowen. Earlier she had planned to do that, and had won permission to file her cert petition a month late. The issue is whether the party has standing to challenge a law that makes it illegal to circulate a petition for a candidate for district office, if the circulator doesn’t live in that district. The U.S. District Court had ruled that the party doesn’t have standing, but the Ninth Circuit had ruled that it does have standing. If the legislature doesn’t repeal the residency requirement, the U.S. District Court will rule on the constitutionality of the residency requirement.

Colorado: the Tenth Circuit will hear Riddle v Hickenlooper on September 26. This is the case that challenges a law that says individuals may donate $400 to a legislative candidate nominated in a primary, but only $200 to an independent, minor party, or write-in candidate.

Hawaii: a U.S. District Court will hear the Democratic Party’s lawsuit against the open primary on October 7 at 9 a.m. The case is Democratic Party of Hawaii v Nago. On August 22, the party submitted an affidavit explaining that it has 65,000 members. Hawaii registration forms don’t ask the voter to choose a party, so the party has a membership list based on people who have filled out the party’s own application. The party asks for $25 but it is voluntary.

Kansas: on August 22, the Secretary of State filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Government, arguing that the federal government must modify the federal voter registration form within Kansas to require everyone who uses the form to attach proof of citizenship. The Secretary of State of Arizona joined the lawsuit, which is called Kobach v U.S. Election Assistance Commission, 5:13cv4095. The federal form, which has existed since 1993, asks applicants to sign under penalty of perjury that they are citizens. Earlier this year the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the law that authorizes the federal form, but suggested that states that are unhappy with the form may have the right to alter the form.

Montana: on August 16, the Ninth Circuit refused to reconsider Sanders County Republican Party v Fox. The original decision had struck down the law making it illegal for a party to endorse a judicial candidate.

Nebraska: on July 30, a federal lawsuit was filed against the state law that makes it illegal to pay petitioners on a per-signature basis. Bernbeck v Gale, 13cv228.

North Carolina: on August 12, three lawsuits were filed to overturn parts of the omnibus election law bill. North Carolina NAACP v McCrory, in federal court, and Currie v North Carolina, in state court, challenge the new photo-ID law. League of Women Voters v Howard, in federal court, challenges the new restrictions on early voting, provisional ballots, and elimination of same-day registration. The federal cases are based on the Voting Rights Act and the 14^th and 15^th amendments.

Pennsylvania: the Republican Party, which had intervened against the minor party ballot access lawsuit in U.S. District Court last year, will drop its intervention as the case goes to the Third Circuit. The case, filed by the Constitution, Green, and Libertarian Parties, challenges the unique challenge system that puts petitioning groups at risk of as much as $110,000 in court costs if their petition doesn’t have enough valid signatures. Constitution Party v Aichele.

South Carolina: on August 21, a U.S. District Court ruled that the Greenville County Republican Party does not have standing to challenge the state’s requirement that the Republican Party nominate using an open primary. Greenville County Republican Party v State.

Texas: on August 22, the U.S. Justice Department filed a lawsuit against the state’s 2011 government photo-ID law, which has never gone into effect because another federal court (in Washington, D.C.) had enjoined it. The old lawsuit was based on Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which has been hobbled by a June 2013 ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court. Therefore, the case will now involve Section 2, and possibly Section 3. Section 2 applies to the entire nation and forbids any state law that makes it more difficult for racial and ethnic minorities to vote. The new case is U.S.A. v State of Texas, southern district of Texas, 2:13cv263.

Virginia: on August 19, the state asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear its appeal in Libertarian Party of Virginia v Judd. The issue is the state’s law banning out-of-state circulators. The U.S. District Court and the 4^th Circuit had both struck the law down. The state argues that if out-of-staters are permitted, and they commit fraud, the state won’t be able to prosecute them.

Federal law: on August 2, the U.S. Court of Appeals in D.C. ruled that Ralph Nader does not have standing to complain that the Federal Election Commission did not enforce the campaign finance laws. Specifically, Nader had complained that the Democratic Party had spent millions of dollars in 2004 challenging his ballot access in two dozen states, and had never reported this money to the FEC. The FEC didn’t even notify most of the organizations about Nader’s complaint, even though its own rules say that should have been done. The U.S. District Court had said this was "harmless error" by the FEC, but at least agreed that Nader had standing. Nader v FEC, 12-5134.

~	Demo.	Rep.	Lib’t.	Green	Am Elect	Constitn	Indp. Party	other
Alabama	7,392	8,644	2	– –	– –	– –	– –	– –
Arizona	10,794	4,123	365	372	210	– –	– –	– –
Iowa	51,811	40,606	– –	– –	– –	– –	– –	– –
Kentucky	84,950	86,470	– –	– –	– –	– –	– –	– –
Minn.	36,668	18,955	– –	254	– –	– –	5,024	338
N. Mex.	4,796	2,610	390	– –	– –	– –	– –	304
No. Car.	335,277	200,918	15,817	– –	– –	– –	– –	– –
Ohio	102,944	102,944	– –	– –	– –	– –	– –	– –
Oregon	17,763	4,575	1,080	1,491	– –	330	996	1,533
Rhode I.	15,559	8,144	– –	– –	– –	– –	– –	1,579
Utah	36,146	53,358	4,784	1,924	10,946	2,486	– –	500
Virginia	36,797	14,180	– –	– –	– –	– –	– –	– –
TOTAL	740,897	545,527	22,438	4,041	11,156	2,816	6,020	4,254

The states above give state income-tax payers a chance to send a contribution to the political party of the taxpayer’s choice. The chart above lists the amounts received by each party. Ohio does not let taxpayers decide which party to help, and only lets taxpayers help parties that polled 20% in the last election. The other states let the taxpayer decide which party to help. Entries in the "Other" column are: Minnesota, Grassroots; New Mexico, Independent American; Oregon $1,092 Working Families and $441 Progressive; Rhode Island, Moderate; Utah, Justice.

YEAR	Democrat	Republican	Green	Lib’t.	Reform	Constit.	Other
2000	941,463	822,671	31,864	13,024	5,054	19,209	71,824
2001	680,608	611,065	12,184	8,173	755	2,295	46,232
2002	928,716	892,438	84,120	7,289	749	2,886	97,559
2003	1,181,312	1,126,585	20,665	7,859	46	51	9,975
2004	828,136	786,190	16,309	8,446	324	1,409	8,822
2005	750,461	714,238	18,100	5,546	34	2,442	25,887
2006	915,945	806,193	50,434	7,282	– –	5,847	45,355
2007	1,050,593	850,580	15,716	5,839	– –	3,503	15,627
2008	1,520,746	1,127,478	8,324	5,034	– –	5,938	5,219
2009	978,325	718,165	7,642	45,889	– –	4,520	4,970
2010	830,562	616,027	5,257	11,115	– –	3,617	5,630
2011	850,490	603,022	6,560	53,133	– –	4,367	11,766
2012	1,883,507	1,245,403	7,862	101,253	– –	2,458	8,733
2013	740,897	545,527	4,041	22,438	– –	2,816	21,430

Ballot Access News has been collecting this data starting in 2000, so those fourteen years of data are summarized above. Next year there won’t be any data for North Carolina, because the 2013 legislature repealed the income tax check-off.

Cindy Sheehan will be the Peace & Freedom Party’s candidate for Governor of California in 2014. She probably has more name recognition than any previous PFP gubernatorial candidate. In 2008, she had been an independent candidate for U.S. House in San Francisco, and had been the only minor party or independent candidate for Congress that year who outpolled a major party nominee. She got 46,118 votes while the Republican nominee got 27,614.

The FEC has issued its 2012 election returns book. fec.gov/pubrec/fe2012/federalelections2012.shtml.

Twelve presidential candidates received at least 5,000 votes: Barack Obama 65,915,796; Mitt Romney 60,933,500; Gary Johnson 1,275,971; Jill Stein 469,628; Virgil Goode 122,388; Roseanne Barr 67,326; Rocky Anderson 43,018; Tom Hoefling 40,628; Randall Terry 13,105; Richard Duncan 12,557; Peta Lindsay and her stand-in Gloria LaRiva, 9,399; Chuck Baldwin 5,017.

On August 6, Seattle held a non-partisan election for city office. For city council-at-large, # 2, three candidates were on the ballot. Kshama Sawant, of Socialist Alternative Party, placed second with 44,458 votes (35.06%). She is in the November run-off with the incumbent.

Louisiana holds local partisan elections on October 19. Gregory King, a registered Libertarian, is the only candidate who filed for Lincoln Parrish Justice of the Peace, ward 3, so he is deemed elected.

On August 6, Detroit held a non-partisan Mayoral election. A write-in candidate, Mike Duggan, placed first, with 44,395 votes. He received 45.9% of the total vote. A run-off will be held on November 5 between him and Benny Napolean, who received 29.6%.

New Jersey holds a special U.S. Senate election on October 16 and a regularly-scheduled gubernatorial election on November 5. In June, the legislature passed AB 4237, which moves the gubernatorial election to October 16. Governor Chris Christie still hasn’t acted on the bill. If he were to sign it, both elections would be on the same day. However, he is not expected to sign the bill.

The gubernatorial election has nominees of three minor parties on the ballot (Green, Libertarian, Peace & Freedom) plus a write-in Socialist Party nominee. Three independent candidates are also on the ballot. The U.S. Senate election has no minor party nominees, but eight independent candidates on the ballot.

The North Dakota Libertarian Party petition is still being checked by the Secretary of State. The Arkansas Green Party petition, and the Arkansas Libertarian Party petition, are half-way complete. The Hawaii Libertarian petition is two-thirds complete. The Arizona Green petition is one-fifth complete. The Montana Green petition is about to start.

Chris Henrichsen, who was the Democratic nominee for U.S. House from Wyoming in 2012, has changed his registration to the Green Party. He now lives in Clark County, Nevada. He is a member of the LDS Church.

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