Two weeks before Election Day, activists from across the country gathered for an online rally heralding the historic number of state ballot initiatives seeking to change the way people vote. Hopes were high that voters would ditch traditional partisan primaries and embrace ballots with more candidate choices.
Instead, the election reform movement lost almost everywhere it appeared on a statewide ballot.
“It turns out, in retrospect, we weren’t yet ready for prime time,” said John Opdycke, president of the advocacy group Open Primaries, which organized the rally.
In Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, Oregon and South Dakota — a mixture of red, blue and purple states — voters rejected either ranked choice voting, open primaries or a combination of both.
The open primary proposals sought to place candidates of all parties on the same ballot, with a certain number of top finishers advancing to the general election. Under ranked choice voting, people can vote for multiple candidates in order of preference.
If no one receives a majority of first place votes, then candidates who receive the fewest votes are eliminated and their votes redistributed to people’s next choices.
Election reform advocates raised about $110 million for the statewide ballot measures, vastly outpacing their opponents, according to an Associated Press analysis of campaign finance figures that could grow even larger as post-election reports are filed. Still, their promotional push wasn’t enough to persuade most voters.