At the Missoulian: Open elections? Be careful, Montana
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Two constitutional initiatives to change how Montanans vote will be on the ballot in November, and both are deceptive. Two of them will help Democrats and ensure, ironically, despite supporters’ claims, that election winners are not likely to have a majority of the total votes cast.
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Supporters sell CI-126 as giving voters more choices in primary elections. Montana is already an “open” primary state where voters can choose whether they want a Republican or Democrat ballot, but this initiative would allow people to vote for a Democrat in one race and then a Republican in another one. These are called “jungle primaries.”
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But that isn’t the key aspect of this initiative. The important point is that each race’s top four vote-getters will make it to the general election. In a heavily Republican state such as Montana or Alaska, which adopted this rule in 2022, this reform will help the minority party.
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In heavily Republican areas, you will be more likely to have three Republicans and one Democrat in the general election. If Republicans divide the vote among themselves, it may allow a Democrat to sneak through. It’s no coincidence that in 2022, heavily Republican Alaska elected its first Democrat to the U.S. Congress since the early 1970s.
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There is a reason that California, which also has a jungle primary, has only the top two primary vote-getters make it to the general election. Democrats are smart enough not to set up a system that would divide their votes. Many times, the two candidates who make it to a California general election are both Democrats.
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Among the unintended consequences, parties will pressure their candidates not to run in the primaries.
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If parties fail to keep candidates from running in the primaries, this initiative will make it very difficult for minor party candidates to be among the top four candidates that get onto general election ballots. Either way this initiative hardly seems to be about giving voters more diverse choices.
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CI-127 promises to require the winning candidate to receive a majority in the general election. But, if no one gets over 50% of the vote, there are only two ways of doing that. One way is to have another election after the November general election, something that will be costly and probably have a low turnout. Another option is to adopt rank choice voting, something the initiative’s backers hope to force on the state.
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Rank choice voting has voters rank candidates in order of preference from one to four. When the candidate with the least support is removed, that candidate’s voters will instead have their votes go to their second choice. Another round of vote counting is held, with another candidate being eliminated, and a voters’ second or third votes go to the two remaining candidates.
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“Ranked choice voting is overly complicated and confusing. I believe it deprives voters of genuinely informed choice,” California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) correctly wrote in his 2016 veto message. Most voters don’t bother ranking all their possible choices.
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Despite supporters framing the initiative as ensuring that the winner is supported by a majority of voters, academic research shows the winners of these elections frequently receive less than a majority of the vote.
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If you want a jungle primary, you can do that without having the top four vote-getters move on to the general election. If you want to exclude third party spoiler candidates, there are other ways of making it harder to get on ballots.
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The initiative backers hope that the simple slogans about open elections will mislead voters. But make no mistake, these initiatives are designed to benefit Montana’s Democratic Party.
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John R. Lott Jr. is president of the Crime Prevention Research Center and lives in Missoula. He served as senior adviser for research and statistics in the Office of Justice Programs and the Office of Legal Policy at the Justice Department.
John R. Lott, Jr., “Open elections? Be careful, Montana,” Missoulian, October 10, 2024.
