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Reforming American Electoral Politics: Let's Take “No” for an Answer

In Gilbert & Sullivan's undeservedly obscure operetta, Utopia Ltd., English invaders seek to colonize the impressionable citizens of this tropical island paradise by employing “a marvelous philologist who'll undertake to show, that ‘yes’ is but another and a neater form of ‘no.’” In our two-party form of government, citizens are colonized the same way, proving that truth can be just as goofy as fiction. We can say No to one candidate only by saying Yes to the other. That is American democracy, reinforced by laws and courts. In many of our states there are more laws concerned with the institution of political parties than there are laws concerned with the institution of marriage. This legal safety net for the two-party system was reinforced in 2000 by a decisive 7–2 Supreme Court opinion invalidating as unconstitutional a California “blanket primary” law giving voters the power to pick anyone they want—from any political party or any independent—to nominate as their candidate to run in the general election for a particular elective office. The Court called the blanket primary “a stark repudiation of freedom of association” that stripped the political parties of the ability to control their own nominating process.