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The Primary System Is Crippling American Democracy
There is a reason you never get good candidates to choose from
Today is primary election day in my home state of Florida and that means it is yet another year in which I am not allowed to vote. My crime? Refusing to register with one of the major political parties. Florida is a state with a closed primary system which means that only registered Democrats and Republicans can vote. Florida has 3.5 million unaffiliated voters and 376,000 people registered to minor parties. That is a total of 3,911,522 people who are legally not allowed to vote in the primaries.
And Florida is not alone.
Ten states have completely closed primaries, and another thirteen states have partially closed primaries. Just twenty-two states have open primaries. Just five states include a multi-party or ranked choice system (more on that later.) Despite the fact that independents likely have an opinion on who they vote for, the major parties have decided that their right to vote is not worth the risk in nearly half of our states.
You see, most major political parties have this innate fear that bad actors will vote for poor candidates in an attempt to sabotage the election. This is an insane fear that is propped up by the media, which runs stories every election cycle…
