Wednesday, April 2, 2014

Low Turnout For Primaries Needs Fixing

     A major part of the problem, if not the root problem, of DC politricks is the party based primary system.  An amazingly low percentage of voters determines the outcome of the general election due to the overwhelming majority of Democrats in DC. Winning the primary usually wins the general election. In my view the biggest problem with the primary system is low turnout combined with a large group of candidates to split the vote.  
    In the April 1, 2014, DC primary barely 25% of registered voters participated. Thus while the "winner" of the election is credited to have received 44.24% of the vote, that represents less than 10% of the total number of registered voters.
    There are two solutions - both involve instant run-off in combination with either open primaries or making City offices non-partisan. As I don't expect the local Democrat party to just relinquish the power it has by creating a non-partisan form of governance, open primaries might have more promise in DC.
     The chart below list turnout in all the primary elections in DC since 1982 -


Registered Voted Turnout
September 14, 1982 Primary
327,874
120,234
36.7%
September 9, 1986 Primary
243,372
85,094
35.0%
September 11, 1990 Primary
262,537
135,635
51.7%
September 13, 1994 Primary
304,387
149,457
49.1%
September 15, 1998 Primary
298,265
95,624
32.1%
September 10, 2002 Primary
301,593
104,001
34.5%
September 12, 2006 Primary
321,087
109,781
34.2%
September 14, 2010 Primary
370,416
137,586
37.1%
April 1, 2014 Primary
369,035