Open primaries, ranked choice voting support better democracy

Change is difficult for humans to embrace. I know it. You know it. We like our routines and hold onto them for dear life, often to our detriment, robbing ourselves of the opportunity to evolve and grow, break the mold and truly make a difference.

Change may be hard for Washington, D.C.’s politicos, too – as Peter Rosenstein demonstrates in his recent opinion piece in the Blade. Yet, open primaries and ranked choice voting – the two electoral reforms proposed in the Make All Votes Count Act of 2024, also known as Ballot Initiative 83 – will help our city’s democracy evolve, grow, and improve. They will help us live up to our democratic ideals: more voters’ voices heard, more true choice for voters and politicians who work harder for all of us and are truly accountable to We the People.

We can do better than the status quo that Rosenstein seems to celebrate in his piece. One in every six D.C. voters is a registered independent. That includes me. Yet, under the status quo, our party primaries – which are taxpayer-funded – are closed to these 86,000 voters. Of course, in a nearly one-party city like D.C., the Democratic primary is the most important election.

Our constitutional right to vote should not – and does not – require subscribing to a political party. Yet, registered independents are denied that right in this all-important contest – even though we pay for it with our tax dollars. It doesn’t have to be this way; a majority of states already allow independents to vote in party primaries.

Our closed primaries also discourage change-agent candidates who might appeal to those 86,000 voters. Meanwhile, our single-choice elections discourage first-time and diverse candidates who fear they might “split the vote” or are told to “wait their turn.” Our single-choice elections also mean that candidates can be nearly guaranteed election even if they barely eke out a narrow slice of the Democratic primary vote (sometimes as low as 20 or 25 percent).

With our current election rules closing off real voice and opportunity for many, party bosses end up dictating both the party platform and the policies that come out of the Wilson Building.

There’s one thing our current system is very good at: preserving the status quo. In D.C.’s 2022 elections, only one incumbent lost their attempt for re-election (to another incumbent — a Democrat turned independent — seeking a new seat). All the others won.

Yet, there’s a reason that the electoral reform movement is gaining momentum here and elsewhere: survey after survey shows we are not happy with the status quo. According to a Pew Research Center survey, 62 percent of Americans are not satisfied with how democracy is working in the U.S.

If we want to change the results, we need to change the system. If you want democracy to work better for you, then support for open primaries and ranked choice voting is obvious.

Open primaries in D.C. would empower all registered voters, including independents, to fully participate in our taxpayer-funded primary elections. We must have that right. Voter suppression in D.C. must end.

Meanwhile, ranked choice voting empowers voters, provides more genuine choice in elections, and results in more representative outcomes. Candidates must appeal to a broader audience, winning a minimum of 50 percent of the vote. In our current system, a candidate needs only a plurality in both the primary and general elections to prevail.

Our politicians should work harder for all of our votes. Ranked choice voting is one of the tools to make that happen. (In his piece, Rosenstein questions whether politicians will actually work harder with ranked choice voting. It’s a simple math problem – you have to work harder to win over 51 percent of voters than to win over just 20 or 25 percent.)

Currently 51 cities, counties, and states use ranked choice voting –in primaries, caucuses, and general elections. Since 2005, there have been more than 650 elections using ranked choice voting. Naysayers try to claim that ranked choice voting is too complicated for us. Far from it.

We rank things in our everyday lives – it’s unsurprising that, across those 650-plus elections, voter understanding and satisfaction is high. Cities across the country have elected historically diverse representatives using ranked choice voting, including the first majority-LGBTQ+ city council in Salt Lake City, Utah; a majority-women city council in New York City; and the first majority-people of color council in Minneapolis. In D.C., election reform can help usher more new and diverse voices into office.

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Peter Rosenstein

is a longtime LGBTQ rights and Democratic Party activist. He writes regularly for the Blade.

Is Trump behind bars a good thing?

Incarceration could turn former president into a martyr

I often dream about Donald Trump behind bars, wearing an orange jumpsuit, to match his face makeup, and wake up with a smile on my face. But in the light of day I question if that is a good thing for the country, and I am not sure.

Don’t misinterpret my meaning. I want to see him convicted on every count, of every indictment. My only thought is whether putting him in jail for his crimes, makes him a lasting martyr to his cult. Is that the worst punishment for him? Will he fade from view if we put him in a minimum-security prison? Is there any punishment where he can be kept quiet? One of my friends facetiously suggested Guantanamo. (I think it was only facetious.)

I believe he will be convicted of several charges, if not all, and juries and judges will have to determine what the sentences will be. Clearly, whatever they are, he will use every appeal available to him, going all the way to the Supreme Court if that is an option. There are differences between the federal charges, which are on one level, and the state charges, like those anticipated in Georgia. If he is convicted of those there is no option for a presidential pardon.

What makes Georgia particularly interesting is its RICO law, which may make moot whether Trump has to do prison time if Fani Willis, the prosecutor in Fulton County, decides to use it in her indictment. As reported in Newsweek , Elie Honig, a former federal prosecutor and CNN’s legal analyst, said, “under Georgia State law, if somebody’s convicted of RICO, there is a fi ve-year mandatory minimum.” Georgia has a stronger RICO law than the federal government. Honig added, “RICO charges could be used in the case against Trump if Willis’s offi ce can convince a grand jury that numerous people were working together as part of an illegal plot to keep Trump in power after losing the 2020 election.” From all reports we have seen that is clearly easy to show.

In the federal case brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith, being tried in D.C., U.S. Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, has already said , “while the former president has First Amendment rights to free speech, those rights are not absolute and must be weighed against protecting the integrity of the court process, regardless of his status as a political candidate.”

Judge Chutkan went on to say, the “existence of a political campaign” will not have a bearing on her decisions and that Trump running for president should not interfere with the orderly administration of justice. If that means he can’t say exactly what he wants to say about witnesses in this case, then that’s how it’s going to be.” Let the games begin.

Many of us will follow these cases, along with those in New York and Florida, religiously. To political junkies, newspapers, and TV networks, this is manna from heaven. But let us never forget what this is really about. While it may entertain some, it is about a homophobic, sexist, racist, anti-Semitic president trying to stage a coup in the United States. Trump did something most of us thought unthinkable. We believed these things happened only in banana republics, not in the Unites States. Trump and his minions of what Mike Pence called ‘crackpot lawyers,’ along with his cult followers, gave us a very disturbing wake-up call. That is what these court cases, particularly the ones in D.C., and potentially if it comes to fruition, in Georgia, are both about.

So, no matter what happens to Trump, whether or not he ends up in jail, it is crucial juries convict him of the crimes he is both accused of, and by his own words, has perpetrated.

It seems clear these cases won’t be fi nally decided, appeals and all, before the 2024 election. So, before we possibly see him in jail, if the Republican Party, or as I call it the Trump cult, allows him to be its candidate for president, it will be up to the American people to net out justice for what he has done to them. They will have the chance to do that in November 2024, by handing him a resounding defeat.