Welcome back, James
The 15% rule continues to keep valid candidates off the ballot. Danielle Allen is the latest casualty this cycle. We know Ben Downing cited the caucuses along with fundraising challenges in why he dropped off. We have yet to see how it might affect the crowded open races for LG, Auditor, AG, or the possibility of a contested primary for SoC. Doubtless more candidates will drop out, even though contested primaries are healthy for our democracy and vital to maintaining voter interest in the Democratic party.
Caucuses, like holding town meetings for midsize cities like Brookline or Wakefield, another bete noire of mine, are more democratic in theory then in practice. Every voter who has the leisure time and local civic knowledge to show up has more influence over the process than a solitary voter in a ballot box. Yet the kind of voter who tends to show up is overwhelmingly white and elderly. This was true for a caucus a colleague with two small children attended in Belmont which she dragged her husband to mainly to watch over the kids.
She was disappointed there was no available childcare and could easily see how single mothers, women of color, working families, English language learners, and young people could feel locked out of the process. The building was not particularly ADA friendly and the time of the caucus was arguably unfriendly to people who keep strict Sabbaths on Saturday’s, something my Jewish colleague is especially sensitive about. This year the candidates zoomed in and gave boilerplate pitches, so it’s not like participants even got the grassroots “FaceTime” that make these events important for longtime activists.
Like Pablo’s reporting on Arlington, Healey clearly dominated in Belmont and was the most known and organized campaign there. Now I like Healey and will probably vote for her in the primary, but the divisive 2016 primary experience should make us leery of a field being cleared by gatekeepers or a perceived coronation. My friend came in unpledged, but ended up working the room to get Sonia Chang Diaz her 15%, which some of the more zealous Healey supporters did not even want to extend to her. If a well known and respected legislator like Sonia drops out, this process is truly a travesty.
There is also the issue that the majority of voters in this state are moderate independents rather than progressive activists. The caucus system benefits Beacon Hill insiders at the expense of the Beacon Hill outsiders who historically get elected. I’m 33 and the only two Democrats elected in my lifetime to the corner office are Deval and the Duke. That’s it. The only outsider to politics in this cycle has already left the field.
We have already seen the thought of facing a competitive primary from the right scare off Charlie Baker and the largely unknown businessman Chris Doughty will have an even harder time getting elected on that side of the aisle against Geoff Diehl who is the clear choice of GOP party activists . We do not want outsiders and moderates shut out of our own process and kept off our ballots like they arguably will be on the GOP side for years to come.
Caucuses should still exist to send delegates to the state convention, which should still have the power to formally endorse candidates, but statewide candidates should be nominated by getting signatures to get on the ballot like any other candidate for office. The caucuses and delegates should have no further gatekeeper role for determining who gets on the ballot.
This would be a better way for candidates to show they have widespread support from registered Democrats, including the many working class members of our party who cannot give up their weekends. It’s doubtless any of the 18 year old kids I teach or their parents who work weekends and nights could participate.
My solution seems like a good hybrid. Keep the caucuses and conventions for those who love them, but open up the primary nominating process to all registered voters via signature gathering to get on the ballot and a ranked choice or jungle primary to determine the nominee. Holding it over April break or the Memorial Day weekend would be another reform to make sure we have a unified party much earlier in the process and a primary everyone knows about and has the time to participate in. What could be more democratic than that?
HERE WE GO AGAIN!
I’m glad to see you back too, but you could hardly have chosen to write a diary with which I more strongly disagree (not to mention as is the case more often than it should be for someone as plugged in as you, you got a couple of key things incorrect).
First, we have relatively few candidates anyway this year and signatures are what’s going to be hard with so many virtual caucuses. I have yet to hear someone convincingly argue that a particular candidate would have done great in a primary if only those evil activists had not kept them off the ballot. Allen I think actually surrendered too soon with many caucuses still to go. I would have guessed Healey for the endorsement with Chang-Diaz and Allen both on the ballot. Allen also got a key piece wrong in her email announcing her withdrawal. She said you need a plurality to make the ballot. I don’t recall Downing citing the caucus hurdle, but I suspect he had a good shot at 15% too.
Why are signatures an OK form of gatekeeping, but delegates are not? The former even allow unenrolleds to sign, but SOME part of the process should be reserved for party registrants (which of course anyone can choose to be). Parties have the right to control access to their own ballot, and I’d want to keep Larouchites and other posers off (just for example – I’m not suggesting anyone running this year is not legit.). Deval Patrick will always be my evidence that outsiders with a good operation can dominate the caucuses and win the convention. Even Elizabeth Warren, like Allen a Harvard professor rather than Beacon Hill insider, managed to dominate her convention. Do we really regret Marisa DeFranco’s absence from the ballot?
There are plenty of more diverse caucuses than you seem to have experienced, and don’t forget there are add-on opportunities for minority, youth, disabled, and LGBT+ folks precisely to make sure the convention is demographically representative. This process SHOULD be for those so inclined though the invitation is of course open to all. If the building was not ADA compliant someone should complain to the state party since such is required (as is this year a remote option for those not comfortable coming out) and I would hope communities with large Jewish populations would respect the Sabbath. I sympathize with the idea of providing child care, but in practice in my experience with events where it is offered it is hardly used. However, keep in mind there is no inherent right to participate in a nomination process like there is to vote in the general (and Republicans use a similar process), but if you want to get on the ballot just with signatures you can bypass the party process entirely and get on the general ballot as an independent.
I think this year the big issue is simply Maura Healey being so dominant, though even with her I have not seen aggressive slate-making on her behalf. She froze both the Governor’s and AG’s races while people waited for her to announce her intentions, which she did the day before the state party deadline, though everyone seems to suspect she knew what she would do long before that.
In practice this comes down to no harm, no foul, and if it ain’t broke…
I think unenrolled signing papers is a feature rather than a bug. It brings more folks into the decision making process earlier which only helps generate enthusiasm for our candidates and campaigns.
I think DiFranco on the ballot would have been fine, she wouldn’t have won and a contested primary would’ve sharpened Warrens skills against Brown.
If Allen is saying she didn’t think she’d get 15% she is joined by a few others every cycle. You and I both know (me better than most) anyone running as an independent does not have a real shot at winning the general. Surely Baker came to that conclusion and that factored into his own thinking on his race. I would hate for the Democratic party to maintain a small tent approach to the kinds of candidates it puts on the ballot and ultimately nominates.
I would agree the process is not broken for the people who benefit from the status quo, my colleague was a first time caucus goer who felt like the process was a waste of her precious time and disappointed there were not more people pushing for a contested ballot in the fall. So it is for her and others who feel shut out of the process that I think we should open it up to just requiring signatures for the ballot. That’s the only change I’d make to the process.
Under my reform you can largely keep the status quo of the existing caucus system. The only power you would lose is the power to keep otherwise popular candidates off the ballot. I’d maintain the convention system and existing endorsement process. That would still matter to candidates and campaigns. Signature requirements for statewide office are nothing to sneeze at either, so it’s unlikely anyone truly unqualified would get on the ballot.
All endorsements are worth is bragging rights. You aren’t even listed on the ballot as the endorsee. We just differ here. I want the institutional party to control ballot access and I can’t think of any candidate who was “otherwise popular” kept off the ballot. After all, if they are so popular they could have easily gotten on the ballot. Baker would have been a shoo-in for re-election had he wanted it (unfortunately). If your colleague thinks its a waste of time she doesn’t have to participate. She can leave that for those of us who do find it worthwhile, but if the candidate she wanted on the ballot didn’t make it she can’t complain if she didn’t help make that happen. Parties must be worth something – heck, if it were up to me we’d only allow registrants to sign papers and close the primaries. I know of no other organization that allows non-members to contribute to their formal decision making and leadership choosing process. Again, that doesn’t really bar anybody – if you want to participate, just join the party!
I would hope that you would address her concerns since she did take an entire day out of her busy life as a working mother to attend these caucuses. She did find it valuable in other ways, mainly since she felt like she played a meaningful role in keeping some of the candidates she liked viable. I believe she will go to the convention as well.
I think a lot of your arguments amount to “this is the way we’ve always done it so that’s the way it’s done” which is one of the worst reasons one can cite to maintain a policy. I think in this day and age we have to meet voters where they are rather than expect them to come to us.
You articulated this principle quite well in your other thread praising reaching out ti the independents and swing voters you are excoriating to join the party here. The reality of the unenrolled majority is not going away anytime soon, especially if we start closing primaries and the like. It’ll just ensure more unelectable left of median voter nominees like the last primary.
I’ll concede the endorsement is not enough skin in the game and you and Pogo make some valid points about the grassroots nature of this process and how that help insulates the primary process from big donors and a runaway front runner. So 5% seems like a reasonable compromise. An easier hurdle to clear, but a hurdle that still remains important, just not as important as it is now. 5% should be high enough to keep off the riff raft while giving enough space for the Allens of the world to compete.
What caucus did she attend that took an entire day? Larger caucuses might take two hours tops (Rules require that voting begin no later than one hour following advertised start time.) and many smaller caucuses are wrapped up inside of an hour. My theory is that closing the primaries will incentivize less ideological folks to pick the side they are closest to and keep both parties closer to the center, since most unenrolled still have pretty strong habits as to which side they ultimately vote for. I still say 15% of delegates is less daunting than 10K signatures and again, I have yet to see it as a true barrier to anyone likely to do well in a primary. This part of the process IS frankly for the subset of voters able and willing to come to us, though the invitation is and ought to be wide open. However, somehow even with my limitations I have chosen to, and thus managed to, make it a priority. I believe everyone who is eligible should vote when the time comes, but not everyone necessarily needs to be involved at this stage.
The rules in prior (pre-pandemic) years required paper ballots. In Arlington, which elects a large number of delegates, the process can be very time-consuming. Consider that we needed five ballots to complete the caucus (female delegates, male delegates, either gender delegate when we had an odd number of delegates, female alternates, male alternates), this can take hours.
We attempted to speed up the process by printing paper ballots so tellers could align the votes with the tally sheets, but we have had 300+ folks casting ballots at our caucuses. This year’s Google balloting was much smoother.
“ My theory is that closing the primaries will incentivize less ideological folks to pick the side they are closest to and keep both parties closer to the center, since most unenrolled still have pretty strong habits as to which side they ultimately vote for. ”
The opposite has been proven time and time again. Partisan primaries are a primary cause of polarization and dysfunctional government today. Frankly, I think an all party jungle primary is a better way to go, since it will get
more unenrolled voters involved at an earlier stage and prevent ideological voters from picking the ultimate winner. At least with the 5% rule, caucuses still carry weight but so do the weight of ordinary voters.
I’m very much opposed to jungle because I want major parties to be represented in the general. My ideal would be ranked choice primaries followed by ranked choice generals. Ordinary voters still have plenty of options. I would not favor a system where the convention actually decides the nominee. BTW, I’m not convinced that getting unenrolleds involved early is a feature. Let parties choose their nominees, who still would have to appeal to unenrolled voters in the general.
We don’t have major parties (plural) in Massachusetts.
I know you hate ranked choice and I don’t want to hijack the thread, but I think other parties have a better chance of developing with that system since they won’t be seen as spoilers.
I don’t hate RCV. I hated the ballot question that sought to impose RCV on our current broken system, in which 75% of MA elections are uncontested.
As a student of history, you will appreciate the irony of your position. Like your call for an elected Boston School Committee, your call to end the 15% rule are actually calls to end “reform” initiatives from previous era’s. Back in the day, eliminating the habitually dysfunctional elected Boston School Committee with an appointed board was viewed as reform and not discriminatory. Same was true with the 15% rule, which was championed by Michael Dukakis as a mechanism to give grassroots organizers an equal footing with the “party bosses” of that era. Just goes to show you what can happen to good intentions over the long run.
And I agree with Christopher the Allen’s case is not compelling. If you vote with you heart in a Primary, then I would have voted for Allen. I was even thinking of running as a delegate and help her get on the ballot. But after making impressive progress in fundraising ($1.3 million total, with $400 Th in the bank) she surrenders after two weeks into the caucus process?????
History I think bears out Christopher’s opinion that Allen had a great chance to make the ballot. There would be many factors pushing to have all three candidates make the ballot and with the same effort that Allen put into fundraising, she would have secured her 15%. I’m confident of that.
But at what cost? And that question leads into what the REAL problem is with the 15% rule in terms of modern politics. The real cost of the 15% rule to Allen and others is not so much the cost of investing time and money into the convention, but it is ALSO the amount of money the campaign will not be raising because of candidate and staff time being put into reaching the 15% hurdle.
In the 1980’s Dukakis and other reformers wanted to build party cohesion and grassroots organizational skills. After all, isn’t it a good thing that candidates have to engage with party activists who could be valuable volunteers in the general election?
That attempt to make the party relevant failed and the need for money grew and grew. Today campaigns have to focus their time on raising money for TV the week(s) before the election, rather than engage in an ancient tradition of retail politics. Ironic, given Prof. Allen’s leadership in the democratic reform movement.
I do feel the 15% threshold is to high–as there will be very qualified LG candidates that mayn’t reach that benchmark because of the number of candidates–but I do feel there needs to be some modest bar like 5% that demonstrates you have a modicum on legitimacy within the party.
As for the bar of 10,000 signatures at the same time…that’s another discussion.
I could live with 5% and a pairing back down of the signature requirement. Seems like a reasonable compromise that gets more qualified candidates on the ballot while still giving caucus goers a reasonable say in the process beyond the endorsement which I’ll concede to a Christopher is largely symbolic (and occasionally awkward if the primary vote goes the other way).
5% might be the ideal number actually, since I do agree with pogo that grassroots engagement should trump fundraising metrics, but I also do not want the threshold to be so high that the caucuses take on outside importance. 5% gives them some meaningful skin in the game an endorsement does not provide while removing most of the gatekeeping features and restoring it to the broader electorate. Good call.
The 15% rule protects the party’s freedom of association, choosing which candidates it wants to allow in its party primary. I have been to conventions where followers of Lyndon LaRouche were lining the streets protesting the 15% rule, as they wanted to get into the Democratic primary, and the 15% rule enabled the party to avoid that association.
Yes, Maura Healey won all 40 delegates in Arlington, but there was a boatload of organization behind putting together the slate (Lynn Bishop is a delegate wizard). Sonia Chang-Diaz had a considerable head start in the campaign, but failed to make the connections necessary to build a slate for the caucus. As a serial delegate, I would have expected to hear from the Chang-Diaz and Danielle Allen campaigns before the caucus, and their lack of outreach contributed to my decision to caucus for Maura. Chris Dempsey called me twice over the past couple of months, and I was able to ask a bunch of tough questions that led me to believe he would be a very good State Auditor.
This is not a question of ballot access. This is a specific question about access to the Democratic primary and the nomination of the Democratic Party. As long as our elections are structured to put forth one Democrat, one Republican, and a bunch of unenrolled candidates on the ballot, the party faithful will have a large influence on who can get elected. The fix isn’t to get rid of the 15% rule; it requires far more structural change which I will leave to another post.
I got very little direct outreach myself, but maybe its because that as a DSC member candidates figured they could wait before nailing down my support.
Here’s the reform post I promised.
James wrote:
Yes. Lots of good thoughts here, but let’s take them apart and examine the key components.
The Republicans are no longer a viable party in Massachusetts. I used to say we had a 1.5 party system, but Jim Lyons is running that party into the ground. Every cycle, the Democratic primary determines the winner in more and more races, to the point where a candidate who “voted for Trump and mocked (Elizabeth) Warren” won a Democratic primary and a seat in the Massachusetts House of Representatives.
It’s time to dump the party primaries. It’s also time to dump the September primary. James thought a primary during April break would work, but that is a systemic barrier to folks who take vacations during the school holiday.
James’ instinct for an open (jungle) primary is the right one. The date should be at the end of our spring political season, the Tuesday before Memorial Day. Let’s use Ranked Choice to narrow the field to the top three candidates, take the summer off, and return on Labor Day to have a meaningful discussion of candidates and issues.
The late May primary is great for towns, as its a great time to reach voters at town elections and town meetings. Have a party convention in March to determine who can run in the primary with the party label, either as a nominee (50%) or designee (15%).
FYI, you have a very good comment about your experience with candidate outreach marked as “pending”. I suspect this is because you included a lot of links, but hopefully an editor can approve it.
Yeah, I am a BMG subscriber and I am a bit miffed that I have a post marked as pending. I mean, shouldn’t I receive the VIP treatment for the premium price of $3.99 per month?
Sorry about that. I didn’t notice until just now.
Wow, big news. You’re an admin now. Congratulations, I missed that.
Heh. Thanks.
I’ll co-sign onto this reform. I think a May all party primary also makes sense and like using ranked choice to determine the top 3 and then we can have a general. It actually could also help third parties and independents by making that initial primary relevant (and even potentially giving those candidates the chance to eclipse the Republicans).
Completely agree the Turco election is proof that some kind of ranked choice and or runoff system is needed. I think Juan Jaramillo could have won that race if it came down to the top 3 or top 2 candidates.
That seems to complicate things. Anything that does not result in each party being represented in the general is a deal-breaker for me.
Consider there was no Republican primary, so all the GOP-leaning unenrolleds were free to wander into the Democratic primary to support Turco. The result was the Trump “Democrat” ran against the real Republican.