Americans from both parties consistently express deep concerns about the state of our nation's democracy, and this fall many voters may have a chance to take action on the issue by voting on state ballot measures that touch on key issues of elections and governance.
Eight states, including Ohio, and seven others, mostly in the West, seem almost certain to introduce bills to overhaul redistricting or rewrite their election rules to curb hyper-partisanship and give voters a greater say in choosing candidates.
While redistricting ballot measures are not uncommon, there has never been a year with more than three electoral ballot measures since citizen-sponsored ballot measures were introduced in the early 1900s, according to Ballotpedia, an online election database.
“It feels like people's voices are getting less and less,” Cathy Cunningham, a 55-year-old bioscience consultant from Cincinnati, said last month after signing a petition for a ballot measure to undo Ohio's unfair redistricting. “When you have such a huge imbalance of power, how do you take it back? We're creating the perception that we live in a democracy, when in reality, we might not.”
Ohio has been a particular hotbed of discontent, where dysfunction — particularly a $60 million bribery scandal and thoroughly rigged electoral districts — have left many in the state skeptical and dissatisfied with the status quo in government.
Hundreds of thousands of Ohio residents have signed a petition drafted by the strategically named group “Citizens Not Politicians” to undo the fraudulent redistricting that gave Republicans a supermajority in the state legislature and unfairly won a majority of the state's 15 House seats.
A proposal to have an independent commission draw political maps instead of politicians seems almost certain to appear on the November ballot.
Proposals in six other states (Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, and South Dakota) would eliminate closed or semi-closed primaries and instead have primaries that are open to all candidates and all voters. (Closed primaries are open only to voters registered with the party in the primary; semi-closed primaries are closed to voters of other parties but open to independents.)
The Colorado and Nevada bills would replace traditional winner-take-all elections with ranked-choice voting, in which voters would rate the top four or five candidates in order of preference. The Democratic-led Oregon Legislature also voted along party lines to place a ranked-choice voting measure on the November ballot.
Supporters of these campaigns say they exploit deep voter frustration with a political system that ignores ordinary citizens' priorities.
“A closed primary system is rigged to favor partisanship,” said Joe Kirby, a former business executive from Sioux Falls who is leading the South Dakota effort. “We want a Legislature that reflects South Dakota's values,” which he says are not the values ​​of the 17 percent of people who voted in this month's primary.
The goal of all these proposals is to bring more voters into the democratic process, especially in many primaries where turnout is low and voters with extreme views have a large influence.
The argument is that closed primaries deprive independent voters of a say in choosing the general election candidate. Independents are a growing segment of the electorate and in some states now make up the largest portion of the electorate. Candidates in open primaries have an incentive to appeal to independents as well as voters of the opposing party, which, in theory at least, should move them closer to the political center.
Also, because rigged districting can disproportionately affect the outcome of an election, parties with little chance of winning often do not field candidates in the general election. (Nationally, about 4 in 10 state legislative elections have only one candidate.) In such cases, the winner of the general election needs to win only the support of primary voters, not the broader electorate that will vote in November.
Proponents of ranked-choice elections argue that they not only give voters a greater say in choosing the ultimate winner of a political race, but also reward candidates who seek to win the support of a broad cross-section of the electorate.
It's no coincidence that electing more moderates would change the conditions that have made the Republican Party a breeding ground for far-right extremism, said Richard L. Hazen, director of the Project on Protecting Democracy at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law and an election law expert.
“This has a lot to do with the battle for the soul of the Republican Party,” he said.
Not everyone buys that logic: Academic research suggests that eliminating redistricting and adopting certain types of ranked-choice voting could indeed curb extreme partisanship and promote cooperation, but the evidence in favor of open primaries is more mixed.
Still, the proposed amendment has support across the political spectrum in most states. It's a top priority for groups that advocate for structural reform of the U.S. political system and for deep-pocketed donors who are often associated with liberal causes. Not only are the state groups pushing for the amendment bipartisan, but they're mostly run by moderate Republicans in heavily Republican states like Idaho, Montana and South Dakota.
Republican leaders have been less supportive. Legislatures in Arizona and Missouri are planning to put bills on the November ballot that would ban ranked-choice voting, require closed primaries, or both, and a citizen-led initiative in Alaska is also planning to ask voters to repeal the state's ranked-choice voting system.
Allies of Republican leadership are expected to spend money to oppose many of these voting measures, likely resulting in a series of costly voting fights this fall.
The political stakes are high in Ohio, where the new political map could weaken Republican control of 10 of the state's 15 congressional seats, meaning tens of millions of dollars could be spent in the fight over redistricting changes.
state.
One evening last month, Claire Wagner, a volunteer with Citizens Not Politicians and a member of the League of Women Voters of Ohio, gathered more than 20 signatures on a petition calling for redistricting changes at Rheingeist Brewery, a beer hall near downtown Cincinnati.
The signatories were a motley crew: Elizabeth Fisher Smith, 63, and Lee Smith, 64, from Cincinnati's liberal Hyde Park neighborhood, have been drawn to the rural, conservative eastern edge of the 2nd Congressional District for decades. Katherine Cervantes, 47, from conservative Westchester Township in northern Cincinnati, likened the redistricting to the discrimination against African-American immigrants chronicled in the award-winning book, “The Warmth of Other Suns.”
Organized opposition to the amendment is imminent: A former treasurer for a Republican political campaign registered this spring as treasurer for a group called Support Ohio Fair Districts, which is expected to oppose the bill.
State Senate Republican Chairman Matt Huffman previewed the opponents' arguments in a February interview with the Cincinnati Enquirer, saying the campaign was “clearly an attempt by far-left groups, people outside the United States, to get who they want elected. It's redistricting at its finest.”
Early funding in support of the redistricting amendment has come mainly from left-leaning donors such as the American Civil Liberties Union, teachers unions and the Sixteen Thirty Fund, a major donor to progressive and pro-democracy causes whose largest donor is Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Weiss.
But support for the amendment crosses party lines. The campaign's de facto leader, Maureen O'Connor, is the former Republican chief justice of the Ohio Supreme Court who cast several decisive votes to overturn previous district redistricting decisions. In an interview with The New York Times, she called the push for the amendment “the most important thing I've ever done.”
However laudable, many experts and activists say the proposed amendments are a weak medicine to cure the ills of American democracy.
“We can all agree that our political system is dysfunctional,” said Nate Persily, a leading expert on voting and democracy at Stanford Law School, “but this is not a particularly effective way to address our crisis situation. Changing the rules of primaries at a time when insurrectionists are breaking down the doors of the Capitol is only going to have limited impact.”
But Chuck Coughlin, a former campaign manager and aide to two Republican governors in Arizona, sees anything that weakens the control of both parties as a step in the right direction.
He is now a strategist for the Campaign for Fair Elections in Arizona, which is pushing a bill to end semi-closed primary elections in the state. The campaign has already collected 100,000 more signatures than the 384,000 needed to put the measure on the November ballot.
“Everybody is unhappy with both parties, except for the extreme partisans,” he said.
Alain Delaquerière contributed to the research.
