Let’s “Say Bye to the Bye!”

Tuesday, August 25, 2020, is election day here in Oklahoma. So this is an appropriate time to talk about a serious problem with our elections. There are times when registered, eligible voters are not allowed to vote to decide who represents them.

I put together this explainer video to illustrate the issue. In the video I also propose a simple change to address the issue.

The Problem

There are 24 Oklahoma legislative races this election cycle where the voters in one party will not have the opportunity to vote for who represents them. That’s because all the candidates in the race are from the same party and Oklahoma has a closed primary system. When this happens, the outcome of the primary (or the runoff - those are also closed) determines who represents the people. To use a sports analogy, that’s because there is a “bye” in the other part of the bracket.

Back Story

In 2018 I attended a great Public Affairs forum hosted by the good folks at Oklahoma City Community College (OCCC). The presenter was former US Congressman Mickey Edwards (R-Oklahoma). The good Congressman spent a fair amount of time discussing the abuses that stem from the traditional primary system. I won’t go into all the details but I’ve included the video from that day and cued it to start where he begins speaking about primaries.

Congressman Edwards basically said primaries are how the respective political parties determine the party’s preferred candidate. That’s the candidate the party will endorse. But primaries aren’t supposed to be for anything else! Unfortunately, we’ve let them become a means by which the parties prevent voters from voting for candidates. I’ve thought about this a lot since then.

Proposal

The idea is this: When all candidates in an election are from the same party, just skip the primary election. Or, to continue with the sports analogy, we “say bye to the bye!”

If there are more than two candidates, the party can use the runoff election to choose its preferred candidate. Then the top two candidates advance to the general election where all registered voters get to participate.

My legislative proposal isn’t a complete fix for the problem. Legislative remedies are seldom made at one fell swoop. But it’s a start. There are other solutions: Universal primaries, rank choice voting, etc. It’s true those fixes would be more comprehensive. One might even say those solutions are more ideal. But this simple change avoids the complexity of teaching people a new way to vote.

So Let’s Say Bye to the Bye!