A voter casts a ballot on Election Day at the Church of Our Savior, Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024, in the Mount Auburn neighborhood of Cincinnati. (AP Photo/Kareem Elgazzar)

Recently, there was some shocking news in Axios: The DNC might have a good idea! They seem to understand that the current presidential primary process could use a refresh, and using ranked-choice voting (RCV) could be one way to shake it up.

Unfortunately, adopting RCV would face too many hurdles and doesn’t seem to solve any of the issues with the primary process. But another option could do the job much better.

(And whether or not first-past-the-post voting survives or a new method takes hold, we can never lose sight of whoever does emerge as the candidate needs to have been properly vetted.)

  • Is this even legal?

A right-wing group headed by a former Heritage Foundation and Claremont Institute fellow has counted 17 states where they’ve managed to ban the practice. So already, you probably can’t do this in a lot of red states. And with plenty of other Republican trifectas who haven’t yet banned the practice, that number could grow.

Well, tough shit. Back to the drawing board, right? Not necessarily. The DNC could always say the states that ban the practice have to go last in the primary calendar. That would raise hackles from states that are so disadvantaged, and you’ll likely get complaints about who this disenfranchises. But, of course, that will happen regardless of what changes are made to the primary calendar. If the DNC is going to do anything, it needs to be willing to face bad faith attacks from the losers. But even if you could use RCV, there are practical issues that make it infamous.

  • How long would it take to run RCV tabulations?

New York City, Maine and Alaska are the most prominent jurisdictions that use ranked-choice voting. In Maine and New York City, it took about a week from Election Day to run the tabulations. And in Alaska (where the geography leads to logistical issues) it took more than three weeks. The delays are due to the fact that in order for candidates to be properly ordered for tabulations you need to have final counts done. Otherwise, you risk eliminating candidates who should stay in the running.

And based on the 2024 calendar, by the time you hit March, you’d have loads of people voting without knowing the results of the previous primaries. So even in a best-case scenario, you run the risk of having people voting without knowing that their favored candidates may have already been eliminated. Another option is necessary.

  • Okay, please tell me this other option to RCV, I’m dying to know

Approval voting, wherein the voter simply checks the box by every candidate that they think is acceptable, has the benefit of 1) not being banned in a third of the country, 2) taking less time to tabulate and 3) being easier to understand. Only Wyoming, Missouri and North Dakota prohibit the practice, so they’d be the only states that would have to conduct elections under old rules.

Instead of waiting for results to come in to run tabulations, states can just report out who’s getting the most votes as they come in. It also requires one less step for voters; they just need to know which candidates they like instead of ranking them from one to five. 

The appeal of approval voting to me is that both in theory and practice, voters end up nominating the most broadly palatable candidate. Rather than creating an incentive for candidates to create a silo of the most dedicated voters within the party factions, they’re encouraged to gain support across all wings of the party. 

  • So, would approval voting make the 2028 primary any better?

I think so! The most closely analogous primary to this would be 2020, when there were a lot of prominent potential candidates (including a former vice president). And I have a unique perspective on that primary because I was in the unenviable position of looking at pretty much everything the 23 serious candidates did while running for the nomination. 

What I saw was a lot of pandering to niche interest groups (the dreaded Groups). If candidates are chasing narrow approval from factions within the party instead of the broadest possible appeal, it means that political hobbyists will play an outsized role in the process, especially in the period between candidates announcing and voters tuning in. 

But if instead candidates are trying to generate the broadest possible appeal across the party, it means doing things that will help them more in the general election, like taking popular positions and making lots of appearances in the media across all sorts of platforms. While Democratic primary voters are more liberal than the public as a whole, a large survey of 2018 primary voters found that close to 40% of them identified as moderate or conservative. The winning candidate will have to appeal to both wings of the party, so a moderate can’t just punch left while a liberal needs to show moderates that they can have crossover appeal. Sounds like a win to me.

But there’s one drawback to moving away from traditional first-past-the-post voting that even proponents of the RCV switch admit to. From the Axios article:

It favors positive politics rather than negative politics, and that’s a great thing for the Democratic Party primaries,” Raskin told Axios. “Oftentimes there’s a sense of acrimony and bitterness that can last decades. Think about the race between Hillary and Bernie Sanders.”

I’m going to disagree here. Think about the ultimate goal: to win the 2028 presidential election. The Democratic primary process should come up with a candidate who’s in the best position to beat whatever right-wing corporate shill the Republicans come up with. That includes figuring out what the candidates’ weaknesses are, going after them and making it so they can defend themselves against the inevitable far-right attacks.

In fact, just look at 2024 — no prominent Democrat was willing to challenge Joe Biden, which meant his vulnerabilities could be papered over until they exploded into view in the June debate. It forced the party to nominate Kamala Harris to replace him in spite of her not having run in any of the primaries, a process that seems to have cost Democrats votes. You can even look to last year, when Jay Jones narrowly won a primary before scandals exploded into view that caused him to run almost 10 points behind the gubernatorial nominee on margin. Making sure your nominee is properly vetted is critical, and you shouldn’t change the primary voting method just because you’re afraid of that.

And the drawback of approval voting is that it does disincentivize candidates from going negative. But thankfully, they aren’t the only ones who can hold their opponents up to scrutiny.

  • Regardless of how the elections are conducted, how do we vet these candidates?

How about the fine folks at Heartland Signal, an independent media website that holds the powerful to account regardless of their party? If you know of any information that voters should have about a politician, even one that you may agree with, we want to investigate. In this moment, it’s critical that our politicians can meet the moment and don’t have politics as usual baggage that will turn off the voters we need to achieve America’s promise. My signal is aaron.1515.

Ultimately, the DNC is going to do what its members want, and that group is so hidebound I don’t have much hope for any innovation. My plea is instead directed to you, the voters. Look for candidates who aren’t afraid to mix it up, can go in front of any audience and charm them. And support your local media so they can figure out if any of these candidates fall short of what Democrats need to put up against the forces of the far right, regardless of how we vote in 2028.