Nick Troiano

Coming up on 10 years running the organization.

And we're not more united than where we started.

However, we're still working on it.

Well, I and United America are focused on solving what we call the primary problem, which is the role that party primaries play in exacerbating our divisions, in increasing dysfunction in government, because they incentivize candidates and elected officials to play to the base of both parties

in order to win the only elections that really matter these days, which is not the November election where most people vote, but the primaries when the candidates are nominated, because most districts and states right now lean so heavily one way or another.

So that's the problem in our view, low turnout party primaries dictating the outcomes of most elections before most Americans can even vote.

The solution set for what we can do to solve that problem is varied.

And when we talk about solutions to the primary problem, it could look like opening up party primaries so that all voters can participate, including independent voters that are currently locked out of primaries in 16 states.

It can look like getting rid of party primaries and replacing it with all candidate primaries.

So there's a single ballot in the primary.

Everyone gets to vote for whomever they want, and the top finishers go to the general election.

There's a system that's called top two that's used in California and Washington, for example.

Or

what Alaska adopted in 2020, which is a top four system.

And when you advance four candidates from the primary to the general election, you want to ensure that one of them wins with majority support, not just plurality.

And there are two ways of accomplishing that.

One is you can hold a runoff election if no one gets over 50%.

Or the other is you can have an instant runoff where people rank their candidates according to preference.

If no one gets a majority, there's a process of elimination using voters' backup choices.

That's what ranked choice voting refers to specifically, which is the part of the reform in a top four primary that is focused on ensuring a majority winner.