Republicans and Democrats should reform primaries to encourage strong candidates

Editor’s note: This article was edited after publication to clarify that the No Labels convention is planned for April 2024.

America is less than two years away from yet another traumatic, dispiriting and potentially dangerous political episode — a 2024 presidential re-run between President Biden and former President Donald Trump, two of the country’s least-admired men.

That depressing prospect has motivated a significant group of Republican and Democratic leaders to mount an independent third-party challenge by seeking ballot access in all 50 states. It  has gained it in Arizona, Oregon, Alaska and Colorado. The group plans to hold a nominating convention in April 2024 in Dallas, where it presumably will name its presidential and vice presidential ticket.

History tells us that the chances of No Label or any other independent movement actually winning an election against the two established major parties are virtually non-existent … and yet.  

The incumbent and former presidents are denigrated by not only committed partisans on the other side. Polls show that most independent voters also hold both men in low esteem. In fact, polls show that majorities within their own parties would prefer other men or women as their party’s nominee.

Given the sequence of unprecedented political events over recent decades, this finally may be the year that someone other than a Democrat or Republican has a reasonable chance of getting elected.

At a minimum, a respectable third-party candidate could draw sufficient popular votes in enough states so that neither Biden nor Trump would achieve the required 270 electoral vote-majority.  The Constitution mandates that, in such a situation, the House of Representatives elects the president from among the three candidates with the most electoral votes. Each state’s delegation would cast a single vote. The vice president is similarly selected by the Senate from the top two electoral vote winners. Only twice in the nation’s history has the president been elected in that manner — in 1800 and 1826.  

Even as the country as a whole might welcome an election contest drained of partisan vitriol and recriminations, the Republican and Democratic parties would be the big institutional losers in such an outcome. Already, both sides have expressed concerns about No Labels and other third-party movements playing a “spoiler role” in 2024.

In the 1992 presidential election, independent Ross Perot garnered almost 20 million votes.  Though he did not win a single electoral vote, many, if not most, of his votes probably came from conservatives and likely cost the re-election of President George H.W. Bush.

In several other elections involving third-party candidates who earned no electoral votes, they nevertheless received enough popular votes to have affected the outcome in several states. On that basis, Ralph Nader is often accused of having cost Al Gore the 2000 election against George W. Bush.

With each major party plausibly having been deprived of the presidency by third-party interventions, it is not surprising that both establishment Republicans and establishment Democrats look askance at that scenario for 2024.

Yet, the parties’ fates are still largely in their own hands. The Republican and Democratic National Committees, and the respective state committees, can improve their own nominating processes in two important ways so that each party chooses its strongest nominee, rather than allowing the weakest Election Day candidate to dominate the primaries, as is presently the situation in both parties.  

First, the RNC and DNC should encourage state committees to reform their present method of running primaries and caucuses on the basis of plurality, rather than majority votes. That means that when a multi-candidate field divides the state’s popular votes, a candidate with a minority but dedicated following can reap a state’s entire slate of delegates. Repeating that dynamic in several states, the minority candidate can accumulate enough delegates to win the nomination — even though the overwhelming majority of the party prefers someone else.  

Anticipating that result, some well-qualified prospective candidates preemptively decline to enter the race, as former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan did recently, for fear of dividing the Republican primary vote and facilitating Trump’s easy path to the nomination. When a party’s candidate is the incumbent president, it is even easier to stifle intra-party competition, as with Biden, even though most Democrats wish he would not run so that fresh faces could emerge. 

When the inevitability of an unpopular minority candidate happens in both parties, as appears likely this time, America is doomed to another lesser-of-evils choice. 

States have time to change the system to require that a primary candidate must receive a majority of the party vote to be awarded the state’s delegates. If no candidate does so, a runoff would be held between the two top vote-getters within 30 days of the primary.

Second, the two parties’ national committees should call on the states to eliminate open primaries. That would prevent partisans from sabotaging the process by entering the other party’s primary and voting for its weakest candidate to oppose their own nominee in the November election. Just as gerrymandering abuse allows candidates to choose their voters, rather than the reverse, the practice of voting in the other party’s primary when there is no real contest in one’s own primary enables partisan interlopers to choose its easiest-to-beat opponent, which occurred in several midterm elections in 2022.

With these two modest changes in state election practices, America would avoid another depressingly undistinguished leadership choice, and the international community would welcome the leader of the free world selected from among the best in its population of 360 million, rather than the least inadequate.

The present system accommodates the interests of the two established parties that share a monopoly on political power. But it also suits the purposes of America’s adversaries who welcome the prospect of dealing with flawed and damaged U.S. leaders and rejoice at the malfunctioning of the world’s foremost democratic system. When America stumbles, the cause of democracy in the world falters and gloating despots advance. 

Republican and Democratic officials need to remind themselves that the whole world watches the functioning of America’s democratic system — our friends for assurance and inspiration, and our foes for weaknesses and opportunities to exploit. Americans themselves should be able to look forward to the next presidential election not with a sense of dread but with optimism for new beginnings.

Joseph Bosco served as China country director for the secretary of Defense from 2005 to 2006 and as Asia-Pacific director of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief from 2009 to 2010. He served in the Pentagon when Vladimir Putin invaded Georgia and was involved in Department of Defense discussions about the U.S. response. Follow him on Twitter @BoscoJosephA.