People seem to forget that political parties — including the two major parties — are private organizations that can make up whatever rules they want for nominating candidates for office.
For example, many in the GOP would like just about anyone except Chris Sununu to be the nominee for governor, but they worry about how the challengers (Karen Testerman, Julian Acciard, and Thad Riley) might split the vote, leaving His Excellency as the winner (and conservative values as the loser).
But the party could choose to use something like Instant Runoff/Ranked Choice voting or some other alternative voting scheme designed to combat the many weaknesses inherent in the first-past-the-post scheme that is normally used.
Alternatively, the party could just include Anyone But the Incumbent as a choice on the ballot, which would encourage voting among party members who figure that none of the other candidates could possibly be worse, but don’t have the time, energy, or patience to learn which would be best.
A variation on this would be to let a voter choose between voting for someone and voting against someone. Each vote against would cancel out one vote for. This could put the whole field on more or less equal footing without singling the incumbent out.
For that matter, the party doesn’t even have to make use of the normal primary system that is run (at taxpayer expense) on its behalf.
It could, for example, use mail or email ballots, which it would accept only from people who are registered as Republican well before primary day. This would exclude ODORs (One Day Only Republicans) who change party registration at the last minute. It would also exclude people who amble over from neighboring states to try to influence what happens here.
As soon as you let go of the commonly held but completely bogus idea that the two-party system is an official part of the government, all kinds of possibilities arise, most of which are better than the traditional method, which right now looks pretty certain to nominate someone who might as well be a Democrat.
Yes, it’s risky to try something new. But should the GOP be more afraid of trying something that might not work, or clinging to something that almost certainly will not work?
