Question 3 on the Nevada ballot, a change to the constitution ostensibly allowing for open primaries, is really a thinly-veiled attempt to bring rank choice voting to Nevada. However, while I am perturbed by the focus of Question 3 being portrayed as open primaries rather than (the much greater impact) ranked choice voting, both are detrimental to our democratic system – and more so when implemented together.
Open primaries allow the opposition to meddle in the selection of candidates by political parties. We’ve seen the result first-hand in this election: Parties have spent large sums of money in opposition primaries to bolster fringe candidates that they think they can beat in the general election [1]. The disturbing choice for Americans: Dumb and Dumberer. When a political party cannot select their own candidates due to interference from the opposition then these are the choices with which we are left. This will only get worse under an open primary system. If we want the best choices, then we must let each political parties choose who will represent them without interference from the opposition.
But the open primary impact pales by comparison when combined with the effect of ranked choice voting. In ranked choice voting voters rank their candidates by preferential order. If no one candidate garners 50% of the vote, then the candidate with the least votes is eliminated and the votes for that candidate are reassigned to the voter’s 2nd choice. This process continues until one candidate attains more than 50% of the vote, thereby winning the election.
Coupled with the open primaries rule, which will allow only the top 5 candidates to proceed to the full election, ranked choice voting becomes a recipe for manipulation. It allows the parties to run multiple candidates, each appealing to a different segment of the population, with the intent that only the party’s preferred candidate will win. The object is to get the “spoiler” candidates into the final election so that – when they are eliminated – their votes will be re-tabulated for their 2nd choice candidate (the same party’s preferred candidate). Worse, we might actually have races where only one party gets through the primary (again, with the intent for a particular candidate to win), leaving candidates with no reason to debate the issues or answer to all the voters.
Open primaries are a recipe for trouble; let’s not California our Nevada. As for rank choice voting, all it does is turn spoiler candidates into a vote-gathering system for the intended candidate. Let’s keep the system fair and simple – oppose both by saying “NO” to Question 3.
[1] Crane, Emily. “Dems Spend $53M to Boost Far-Right GOP Candidates despite Rhetoric: Report.” New York Post. September 12, 2022, Online edition. https://nypost.com/2022/09/12/democrats-spend-53m-to-boost-far-right-gop-candidates/.