It all comes back to the Primary Problem



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Hi Friend,



The U.S.-Mexico border has been in the spotlight lately due to the expiration
of Title 42, a COVID-era policy that allowed authorities to expel asylum
seekers under the rationale of public health. In the days leading up to the
policy’s expiration, thousands of migrants seeking asylum arrived at the
border, prompting President Biden's administration to deploy additional
resources. However, despite these recent efforts to process asylum
applications, many individuals, including young children and their families,
remain in limbo.



It's a frustrating situation that has become all too familiar. For decades,
our nation has failed to develop solutions on immigration policy along the
U.S.-Mexico border. Last fall, Nick Troiano, Executive Director of Unite
America, spoke about this dysfunction on theBipartisan Policy Center's podcast
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, noting: "The issue of immigration is a case study about how our political
system isn't representing most Americans because, on various dimensions of
immigration, you can get large majorities of Americans to agree. Why can't our
Congress?"



The details of immigration policy might be complicated. Still, the bottom line
is pretty simple: our election system is a root cause of the political
dysfunction preventing Congress from acting on immigration policies. If we want
politicians who are incentivized to work together on issues the majority of
Americans care about, we need to start by fixing the election system.





The Presidential Primary Problem: Vermont Explores a Possible Solution!
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When we discuss the Primary Problem, we often focus on state legislature races
and U.S. House elections. But today, we're shifting our spotlight to a
different Primary Problem battleground: presidential races. Presidential races
are not immune to the symptoms of partisan primaries. And perhaps, few states
know this as well as the state of Vermont. This year, their legislature has
explored ranked choice voting as the potential cure to their own presidential
primary problem (fingers crossed it passes sometime in the near future!)



So, what exactly does Vermont’s presidential primary problem look like? Let's
rewind to the 2020 Democratic primary.According to research from the Unite
America Institute <[link removed]>, Bernie Sanders
triumphed with 50.7% of the vote in his home state, while Joe Biden got 22%.
But here's the kicker: All other candidates fell short of the 15% threshold
required to win a proportional share of delegates, including Elizabeth Warren,
who came up just short at 12.55%. As a result, a whopping 27% of the total
votes cast in that Vermont primary were wasted on candidates who didn’t meet
the threshold.



With ranked-choice voting in presidential primaries, by contrast, all Vermont
voters would have their voices heard loud and clear. No more wasted votes or
disregarded opinions.





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Pennsylvania's Closed Primaries Face an Epic Shake-Up
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The movement to open Pennsylvania's closed primaries to independent voters is
gaining serious traction! It's a remarkable turnaround after years of
resistance to this reform from the parties. So, what caused this change of
heart? Well, one big reason is the fear of getting "primaried,” as Open
Primaries’ John Opdycke and Ballot PA’s David Thornburghwrite in
RealClearPennsylvania
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. “Some 50 new legislators in the state capitol … realize they’re now
vulnerable to being ‘primaried’ by ideologues; adding less partisan independent
voters to the primary mix might appeal as a bit of an insurance policy to some
of these legislators,” they explain.



But it's not just the newcomers who are on board. Mainstream Republicans have
reached their breaking point with closed primaries, which arguably have cost
them major victories, like the governor's office, a U.S. Senate seat, and
control of the state House, Opdycke and Thornburgh continue. As thePittsburgh
Post-Gazette
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wisely put it in their recent endorsement, "Pennsylvania's closed primary
system disenfranchises independents and polarizes the political process." And
they're absolutely right!


If you want to dive deeper into the efforts to open up Pennsylvania's
primaries, you won't want to miss theseminar hosted by Open Primaries and
Ballot PA <[link removed]>!





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Voting Rights Lab releases a new report titled “Another Change-Making Year”
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Lawmakers across various U.S. states have been super busy with election policy
over the last three years — we're talking about nearly 4,000 election-related
bills in 46 states and D.C. And while there has been a lot of hype in the media
over bills restricting voting rights, it turns out that more than half of all
the introduced election-related bills wouldexpand voting access and support
nonpartisan election administration.



The Voting Rights Lab <[link removed]> has dropped a report
called "Another Change-Making Year,"
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study that takes a deep dive into election-related legislation introduced in
the first quarter of states over the post-2020 period. It gives us an idea of
where voting rights policy at the state level is headed based on current
projections, which is pretty nifty.



Check out the full report
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Regards,



Alana
__
Alana Persson
Unite America

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