Verum Legalis

By Dylan Hastings

Fifty-six years ago, the moral and right thinkers of the Democratic Party took to the streets of Chicago to demonstrate their displeasure with the selection of Hubert Humphrey to replace Robert Kennedy as the party’s presidential candidate.1 These riots in the streets led to the implementation of primary elections for political parties moving forward, supposedly a more democratic move to allow the people to choose who represents their party.2 Democratic it certainly is, but is it too democratic for inferior thinkers of the United States? I say yes. While this perspective may mean straying away from democracy and returning to our republican history, it is a necessary step to avoid losing our democracy as a whole.3

A major complaint of elitism in the parties is that decisions were made in smoke-filled rooms by old white men who should not be making the decisions for millions around the country; this critique is fair and true—it was almost entirely old white men.4 However, this is not significantly different than who makes party decisions today. According to nonpartisan election tracking site Ballotpedia, there are 45 million registered Democrats in the United States, which means at least 45 million people can cast ballots in the Democratic primary (because of states with open primaries this number is actually higher with those constituents).5 There are nearly 36 million registered Republicans who can vote in Republican primaries (again, with open primaries this number is higher).6

Now let us delve into how many and who ended up voting, not those simply eligible: Less than 22 million ballots were cast in the Republican primaries and just over 15 million were cast in the Democratic primaries.7 This is less than 40 million voters—less than half of the registered Democrats and Republicans in the United States. When you look at the voting age population it is even more shocking; in 2023, there were more than 260 million Americans over the age of 18.8 That is 260 million eligible to vote in primaries—so long as they correctly register—and we see less than 40 million turn out.

Although there is extraordinarily limited data on the demographics of primary elections, in California, a study found Latinos (California’s largest racial group) and Asians (California’s third largest racial group) are less likely to vote in primaries.9 What does that leave us with? You guessed it! California’s second-largest racial group, white people. Thus, our solution to the problem of old white men deciding in smoke-filled rooms who will represent the people of each party is to hold primary elections to allow old white men (in California, those that are 55 and older make up half of the expected voters in primaries) to decide via ballot boxes who should represent the people.10 What makes this particularly atrocious is that these people in the ballot box are not elites who—at a minimum—presumably know a little about what they are doing. Defer to elites in smoke-filled rooms, not plebeians at a ballot box.

Elites are there for a reason.11 Whether your average citizen who sits at your local market and drinks coffee all morning agrees or not, elites almost always know better than the voters who watch their favorite pundits on Fox or MSNBC. You may be asking yourself, who are the elites? They are party members who are career politicians, party intellects, large donors, former presidents, and more.12 Thus, when we have a tool like the elites, it makes sense to use them rather than voters. Parties are a significant gatekeeping entity in the democratic system to prevent people like Donald Trump or Huey Long.13 What opens the doors for wannabe authoritarians, however, is primary elections. Bringing back the elitist and hierarchical party system will preserve our democracy. More democracy leads to its own demise.

Party leaders have incentives to promote democracy as well, to keep the system going.14 Without a United States democracy, they are out of jobs, out of power, out of everything they once knew. For citizens voting in a primary election, it is easier to vote for the person who claims to be for the people and will be a strong leader—so much so that the average citizen does not have to do much critical thinking.15 If we are going to operate under the assumption that democracy is good—and if you want to get rid of democracy there is no need to have this argument—and that preserving our democracy is essential, we need to return to the safeguards that protected democratic values for so long, even if that means we are subject to practices that are slightly less democratic16 Moreover, the Founding Fathers did label us, correctly, as a republic, not a democracy.17 Primary elections from within have given us nothing exceptional; instead, we see people like Walter Mondale or Donald Trump winning nominations. As the falsely attributed quote to Abraham Lincoln goes, “America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”¹⁸