Nick Troiano

And the reason why it doesn't today is not just because of this partisan paralysis.

It's because without competitive elections, we wind up getting career politicians who stay in office for way too long.

We have a quarter of the Congress that's over the retirement age, over a third of the Senate's above age 70.

It's how we get congressional hearings where they're asking about TikTok instead of TikTok.

And these aren't the folks that we need making the decisions that are going to affect maybe the biggest transformation in our economy and society going forward.

Well, I think two things are true.

One is we have a beautiful system of federalism in our country, and we can do this in an experimental way at the state level.

And that is the way that these reforms have gotten done in the past and will today, which is states can change these rules without an act of Congress or a constitutional amendment.

And by virtue of building momentum around reform, it will put more pressure on Congress and potentially create an environment in which

constitutional change is possible.

So I think the state by state route is both a strategy and an opportunity to try different things.

And the second thing is I and we did not start with primary reform as being our North Star.

We got there through

examining what sits at the center of both what is most viable and could be most impactful.

And I do think that abolishing party primaries is the biggest possible change that we can make right now that can open the window for other potential changes down the road, particularly changes that require legislatures to do something.

Because

For them to do something on this issue, they need to be more representative of the population who supports these reforms than they are today.

So I both support an experimental approach to this, and we support primary reform for a very particular reason, which I do think it is the most solvable problem right now.

I think I was frustrated in year one or year two when we're back at the same table and arguing, no, this one, no, this one, and realize we're 30 people in the room.

There's 350 million people out there.