A better way to pick a president

By Nick Troiano
Real Clear Wire

The 2024 presidential election has been a slow-motion trainwreck that we’ve seen coming for more than a year. A 2023 Economist/YouGov poll found that 59% of voters did not want President Biden to run for reelection, and 56% of voters said the same of former President Trump – yet here we are again, with both battling it out on the debate stage.

One might think this leaves significant room for a third-party contender. To the contrary, the unintended consequences of voting for a potential “spoiler” candidate typically force voters to instead choose between the lesser of two evils.

Our presidential nominating system is as much a failure for the parties as it is for the voters. A recent NBC survey found that a generic Republican candidate would beat Biden by 11 points and a generic Democrat would beat Trump by six points. Back when candidates were nominated in smoke-filled rooms, it is hard to imagine party bosses handpicking either a candidate facing 91 felony charges or a candidate who would be 86 years old at the end of his second term. 

The problem with the way we pick our president is not that 20th-century election reforms gave voters a direct influence in candidate selection, but that these reforms did not go far enough to truly reflect the will of the people. The combination of closed partisan primaries, which produce unrepresentative candidates, and plurality general elections, which thwart alternatives to both major parties, conspire to give voters only two viable choices that they often do not like.

The good news is that these structural problems are fixable. We may not be able to avoid a Trump vs. Biden rematch, but we can make 2024 the last presidential election that, by design, produces two choices a majority of Americans do not want. A realistic prescription for a more representative presidential election process includes ditching party caucuses, allowing all voters to participate in party primaries, using instant runoffs, and awarding Electoral College votes on a proportional basis. 

The first set of reforms, eliminating caucuses and opening primaries, will foster a more representative electorate.

The nine states that hold caucuses for at least one party see significantly lower turnout than those with primaries due to the time commitment necessary to participate. In 2016, average caucus turnout was only 9.9%, compared to 32.4% participation in primary states. This year’s Iowa caucus saw the lowest turnout among registered Republican voters in more than 20 years at a mere 14.4%. “An electoral system in a country of 330 million people that gives 100k people in any state that outsized amount of time/money/attention and especially influence is seriously messed up,” tweeted Utah Gov. Spencer Cox (R). “Why do we all just accept this?” We shouldn’t. 

Further, every state should open its presidential primary to all voters, including the rising number of voters who are unaffiliated with both major parties. According to a report by the Unite America Institute (which I run), over 27 million voters across 22 states lack the right to vote in either or both of the major party’s nominating contests in 2024. This includes swing states such as Arizona, Nevada, and Pennsylvania, where independent voters may decide the outcome of the entire presidential election in the general election, yet have no say in who those candidates are. The parties should have an incentive to court these voters early on in the process.

A second set of reforms, instant runoffs in primary and general elections, will ensure winning candidates have majority support.

In the primaries, instant runoffs using a ranked-choice ballot could help prevent candidates supported by a mere plurality of their party from being nominated. It would instead boost candidates who build broader coalitions and would be more competitive in the general election. Further, instant runoffs would also solve the problem of wasted votes when candidates drop out too close to an election to remove their name from the ballot. For example, over 3 million voters cast such ballots in the competitive Democratic primary in 2020. Those voters would instead have their ballots automatically transferred to their second choice.

In general elections, instant runoffs would prevent candidates beyond the two major parties from “spoiling” the election. Voters could safely rank their most preferred candidate first, knowing that if their candidate fails to earn sufficient support, their subsequent rankings would instead count. For example, an instant runoff would have helped avoid the outcome in Florida in 2000, when 97,421 voters supported Green Party nominee Ralph Nader over Al Gore (their likely second preference), ultimately handing George W. Bush the state by 537 votes. Alaska and Maine already use this system. While some Republicans have claimed it’s a Democratic ploy, Trump won an electoral vote under the system from Maine’s second congressional district in 2020.

A final reform, proportional allocation of Electoral College votes, will increase the likelihood that the candidate with the most votes is elected president.

Whether you love or hate the Electoral College, one thing is undeniable: It is no longer serving its original purpose as envisioned by the Founders. Case in point, electors are now bound to each state’s popular vote rather than empowered to use their own judgment. 

We can modernize the Electoral College by having states proportionally allocate their electoral votes among the top two finishers. For example, if a state has 20 electoral votes and the top two finishers each won 50% of the popular vote, each candidate would be awarded 10 electoral votes. 

Proportional allocation is a compromise reform. As Republicans desire, it maintains the Electoral College as an institution that ensures national elections remain state-based and smaller states remain relevant. As Democrats desire, it gives greater influence to the voices of individual voters, regardless of geography. For example, Republicans in California and Democrats in Texas can cast votes that would actually matter. 

And, as 65% of Americans desire, this system would help ensure the winner of the popular vote is elected president, which did not happen in two of the last six presidential elections.

Moreover, proportional allocation combined with instant runoffs would significantly level the playing field for competitors outside of the two major parties. It would empower Americans to vote for who they truly support, and it would reduce the likelihood of a popular third-party candidate winning a substantial vote share state-by-state but not garnering a single electoral vote – as was the case when Ross Perot won 19% of the popular vote in 1992.

A major overhaul of our presidential election process may seem like a long shot, but we’ve done it before. 

Most of the proposed reforms can be enacted by the political parties or by individual states, as many already have. Electoral College reform would likely require an act of Congress, though a proposal for proportional allocation previously passed the U.S. Senate (64-27).

The way we pick our president has radically changed since the days of party caucuses in Congress nominating our candidates. If Americans’ attitudes toward our likely presidential candidates in 2024 are any indication, we are overdue for the next evolution. 

Nick Troiano is executive director of Unite America and the author of "The Primary Solution."

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