We’re Polarized; Now What? The Hard Work of Depolarization
Season One Finale (Part Two of Two)
To some degree all Americans realize we’ve become more polarized in recent times. Those at one extreme obsess about the other, while those of us between the extremes wonder if that incessant tug of war will fray our social fabric to the breaking point.
Fortunately, there are committed individuals and groups working hard to combat polarization. And in Part Two of our Season Finale (“We’re Polarized; Now What?”), we highlight some of these important efforts. First off, the anti-gerrymandering efforts of the Campaign Legal Center, founded by Trevor Potter (former Chair of the Federal Election Commission). Potter tells us why gerrymandering is particularly effective right after a new census is taken and what efforts the CLC is taking on new ballot initiatives and court challenges.
Gerrymandering is a huge factor in the polarizing effects of our primary elections where, all too often, our most partisan voters elect our most partisan candidates. And on our carefully gerrymandered election maps, with far more red and blue than purple, these partisan candidates then easily win general elections to the U.S. House and state legislatures around the country. But John Opdycke, President of the non-profit Open Primaries, explains why the opening of closed primaries to independent and unaffiliated voters is an important means of combating gerrymandering and partisan primary turnout.
We then turn to Ranked Choice Voting (RCV), which can also have a similar effect on electoral outcomes and on campaign culture. Scott Siebel of Fair Vote discusses why RCV, now adopted in Maine and Alaska at the state level, is an important prescription for democracy’s ills.
Next up, what analysis of U.S. politics would be complete without a discussion of money, after a new high of $14 billion spent in the 2020 election cycle? We learn from Joan Mandle, Executive Director of Democracy Matters, some methods for reigning in the influence of money on election and policy outcomes. Last but not least, we visit again with Charles Wheelan, founder of Unite America and our first featured guest on Season One of the Purple Principle. He recounts the strategic shifts at Unite America toward electing moderates from both parties and the legislative progress that might accrue.
If you think U.S. politics is broken, you’re unfortunately correct. But these and other democracy repair experts are hard at work. Tune in to restore some sense of optimism on the path forward, daunting as it may seem.
And please stay tuned to Season Two of the Purple Principle, launching in March. Upcoming episodes include a look at surprisingly civil “Citizen Panels” convened by the non-partisan group, Civic Genius, and a discussion of the far less civil influence of Newt Gingrich with historian and columnist Julian Zelizer, author of the recent Gingrich biography, Burning Down the House.
Source Notes
Trevor Potter. Federal Elections Commission.
Trevor Potter. Campaign Legal Center.
“Gerrymandering.” Encyclopedia Britannica.
Princeton Gerrymandering Project.
“A primer on gerrymandering and political polarization.” Brookings Institute.
“Independent redistricting commissions.” Ballotpedia.
Ranked Choice Voting Resource Center.
Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010).
“State Primary Election Types.” National Council of State Legislatures.
Unite America — Country Over Party
Transcript
Robert Pease (host):
You’re listening to the Purple Principle. And on our last episode, we analyzed some of the most important insights from Season One on understanding polarization.
[Audio collage]
Robert Pease (host):
I’m Robert Pease.
Emily Crocetti (reporter):
And I’m Emily Crocetti, and this time on the Purple Principle, not so much analysis but much more on the hard work of combatting polarization.
[Audio collage]
Emily Crocetti (reporter):
Let’s start with the problem of gerrymandering and Trevor Potter’s group, the Campaign Legal Center.
Robert Pease (host):
Trevor Potter might be a familiar name to you. He’s a former Chairman of the Federal Election Commission as well as general counsel to John McCain’s two presidential runs.
Emily Crocetti (reporter):
And let’s not forget he also advised Stephen Colbert on the formation of his surprisingly serious super PAC.
Robert Pease (host):
His Campaign Legal Center, or CLC, works to combat that partisan drawing of legislative districts we not so fondly refer to as gerrymandering.
Emily Crocetti (reporter):
Which is kind of like the fox guarding the chicken coop. Or maybe residing in the chicken coop, with mapping tools.
Robert Pease (host):
Or maybe residing in the chicken coop with mapping tools but eating only those chickens resembling donkeys or elephants.
Emily Crocetti (reporter):
Okay, that’s a little weird and gross but essentially correct. At least politically speaking.
Robert Pease (host):
Gerrymandering has been around for centuries. Both parties have used it to their advantage. With that in mind, let’s hear from Trevor Potter on gerrymandering in our highly partisan age.
Trevor Potter:
Well, gerrymandering is a real problem because whichever party is in power when the districts are drawn, which is every 10 years after our census, that party draws lines in a way that maximizes their number of seats, either in the legislature or in the congressional delegation. They do that by packing as many members of the supporters, voters of the other party, into the smallest number of districts that they can, so that party wins those districts overwhelmingly, but then the party in power wins a lot more districts than it normally would if voters were evenly spread out. Now, in terms of polarization, it means that people are in districts that are safe for their party. So the only challenge they're going to get is in a party primary. And what tends to happen in both the Democratic and Republican parties is that the energy comes from the base, from the more active members of the party, who are the ones likely to vote in primaries. And generally they tend to on the more extreme side of their party. So it makes it much harder to have any sort of moderate compromises in the middle because members of the legislature or members of the house are concerned about getting challenged if they try to reach out to the other side.
Robert Pease (host):
And right now, Emily, a whole lotta gerrymandering is going on in state legislatures around the country that will have a huge effect in 2022.
Emily Crocetti (reporter):
Absolutely. Currently, Republicans fully control 23 state houses and Democrats only 15. So by gerrymandering alone, without any citizen voting differently in 2022 than in 2020, the U.S. House could flip in the next election.
Robert Pease (host):
Trevor Potter explains why gerrymandering is especially effective after a new census is taken every 10 years, as in right now with the 2020 Census results.
Trevor Potter:
The census maps and the demographic material is so precise that somebody drawing a map knows literally which houses on the block have one registered Republican or two registered Republicans. And the same, obviously, for Democrats. So somebody drawing these lines can very precisely measure based on party registration and all the other demographic data that's available. They can literally slice and dice through a district and be quite precise in terms of how many members of which party they're putting in these districts. So as they say, this is not your father’s or grandfather's gerrymandering.
Emily Crocetti (reporter):
One way to combat gerrymandering is through independent commissions, normally created by ballot initiatives. These less partisan groups take the power to redraw electoral maps away from state legislatures.
Robert Pease (host):
We asked Trevor Potter about two recent 2020 ballot measures: one, where the state of Virginia created a commission, but another where Missouri rescinded one.
Trevor Potter:
So both of these, Virginia and Missouri, are good examples of how difficult it is to overcome partisanship. And I think the lesson from that is that when voters are told that what they're voting on will make the system less partisan, they are in favor of it. And in that sense redistricting commissions have not lost anywhere in the country when voters have actually had a chance to pass them. So that leads to Missouri. and what happened there was that there was an initiative two years ago to have an independent commission and it passed, as they tend to across the country. And the Republican legislature did not like it, because it was going to take power away from them to draw these lines in 2021. So they did something very clever, which is that they came up with an initiative of their own. And what it claimed is that it would improve the independent commission. Now in the details it's significantly weakened it and gave the legislature the right to override it. It essentially gutted the independent commission that the voters had approved.
Emily Crocetti (reporter):
It has to be discouraging when an independent commission is established then repealed. We wondered then if that shifted CLC priorities going forward.
Trevor Potter:
Well, one of them, despite it not being an easy task, is still going to be redistricting next year. Because we do think there are opportunities in a number of states to argue that a gerrymander, if that's what the legislature does, violates that state constitution. There are some states that do not have independent commissions yet. But there is a way for citizens to put initiatives on the ballot and we will be working in those states with local groups to help word those propositions, and then inevitably defend them in court.
Robert Pease (host):
That was Trevor Potter, Founder of the Campaign Legal Center, speaking to The Purple Principle about gerrymandering, a huge factor in why elections, especially primary elections, are so polarizing.
Emily Crocetti (reporter):
And if there’s one big message we’ve heard from all kinds of experts in Season One, it’s the central role that primary elections play in our polarization. Consider the U.S. House. Right now about one quarter of the general elections for the U.S. House are competitive. That means ¾ of these seats are really decided in the primaries.
Robert Pease (host):
Yet independent or unaffiliated voters are unable to vote in primary elections in about half of our states, which also has a whopping polarizing effect. And that’s because many independents prefer pragmatists over idealogues and more frequently split their tickets, as was the case in our purple state of New Hampshire in 2020.
Emily Crocetti (reporter):
John Opdycke leads a group working to fully enfranchise independent voters in primary elections throughout the country. We spoke to him about the mission at the non-profit Open Primaries.
John Opdycke:
We think that the primary should belong to the voters and not to the parties. That's their origin. A hundred years ago, as part of the progressive movement, primaries were created and fought for and enacted to give ordinary people more power and more say in who the candidates were going to be. Now they're seen as the process of a party, which is a private organization choosing its nominee. And that's how most people think of primaries. That's how the law defines primaries. What we're saying is, actually these are taxpayer funded elections. Every person, whether they're in a party or not, should be able to vote in them. Independents need to have the same voting rights as Democrats and Republicans.
Robert Pease (host):
That is a great point, Emily. Why should parties have control over taxpayer-funded primary elections?
Emily Crocetti (reporter):
And why should partisan legislatures have control over redistricting?
Robert Pease (host):
Exactly. It’s madness. And John Opdycke also speaks to the end result of these huge, truly crazy imbalances in our elections and in governance.
John Opdycke:
First of all, it's an issue of voter power. We think that the voters need more power and more say. Given the changes in the electorate, it's also politicians who get elected in open public primary systems are much better elected officials. They actually are incentivized to work with members of the other party to reach across the aisle, to build coalitions with people they disagree with, to focus on governing and passing, you know, good policy. Candidates that get elected in these closed partisan primaries have absolutely no incentive to govern, to represent their constituents. Their job is to represent the 5-10% of partisan warriors that get them elected every two years in the primary. That's all they care about. It's not because they're evil people or stupid people. That's how the election system is set up. So when you transform the primaries, you go from partisan closed primaries to open public primaries. You empower the voters and ironically, you empower politicians to do their job and represent the people.
Robert Pease (host):
As a general rule, Emily, it’s usually the party with the electoral advantage that works against opening primaries to independents. Their thinking is that they don’t need that vote or they fear they won’t get it.
Emily Crocetti (reporter):
But sometimes it’s both major parties working against the opening of primaries,
John Opdycke:
The biggest thing we learned is that if you're going to take control of the primaries away from the Democratic and Republican parties, you better be ready for a fight. The political parties, the Democrats and Republicans, fight each other tooth and nail. They argue morning, noon, and night. But the second you say to them, you know what? We're going to take away these primaries from you. You're no longer going to control them. Everybody's going to be able to vote in them. All their differences disappear. They join forces in five seconds and put everything they've got into defeating you.
Emily Crocetti (reporter):
Opdycke recalls an Open Primaries effort in Oregon where both major parties used the same attack ad against the initiative – with important differences.
John Opdycke:
Oh yeah, they filmed a commercial together. And get this: in east Oregon, which is very conservative and Republican, they showed that and they said these people are pushing for open primaries, but really what's going to happen is you're going to end up with two Democrats on the ballot. That's the commercial they ran in the Republican area of the state. The Democrats ran the exact same commercial, they just changed the bad outcome. Same voiceover, same everything, same three card Monte. But the end result is going to be, you're going to get two Republicans on the ballot. They ran that in Portland and Eugene. It was devastatingly effective.
Robert Pease (host):
Unfortunately the recent Open Primaries effort in Florida, which did get on the ballot this 2020 election, came up a little short. It did get majority support, as in 57% of the vote, but 60% is the threshold for ballot measures in that state.
Emily Crocetti (reporter):
No one said depolarizing would be easy. But unlike Florida, Alaska was able pass a ballot initiative creating a unified open primary for all candidates.
Robert Pease (host):
Ranked choice voting is another important tool for combating polarization. Maine and now Alaska are the first 2 states to implement RCV at the state level.
Emily Crocetti (reporter):
There are some variations in ranked choice voting, but the principle is the same. You no longer just pick your top choice candidate in a crowded primary field where an extreme candidate could win with just 20% of the vote. Instead you pick your top 2, or even your top 4.
Robert Pease (host):
If no candidate receives a majority of first place votes, then the top candidates compete in run-offs based on those 2nd, 3rd or 4th place votes until one candidate does receive 50%.
Emily Crocetti (reporter):
This is really important for legitimacy and for democracy. The winning candidate should earn the majority of votes.
Robert Pease (host):
Fair Vote is a New York-based nonprofit working to spread the common sense gospel of RCV. We spoke to Outreach Director Scott Siebel about the philosophy behind ranked choice voting.
Scott Siebel:
We need to fix our democracy. Everyone's in big trouble, no matter if you're Republican, Democrat, or independent. And why is our democracy in trouble? Look at the problems and understand some of the problems that we're seeing right now in our politics and that that keep our government from working is political polarization. Another big problem is that our elected officials aren't really representative of the American people at large. And the last thing is I think the public officials tend to care about their special interests, and they tend to care about a narrow group of people, whether it's Republicans only caring about the people in their far right, and Democrats caring about the people on the far left. They have to care about those people to get elected. So that's a couple of the problems that we see that keep coming up again and again, and one of the reasons why we can't actually come together. We can't compromise. We can't pass legislation. We can't do a lot of these things because of those various problems in our democracy.
Emily Crocetti (reporter):
So then how does RCV fit in?
Scott Siebel:
Fair Vote sees ranked choice voting as a potential solution to a lot of those problems. Now it's not going to be the end all be all magic bullet. There is no magic bullet to fix our democracy, but ranked choice voting, various forms of it and different ways of doing it would help solve a lot of those problems.
Robert Pease (host):
But there’s another interesting aspect to ranked choice voting which is the effect on campaign culture.
Scott Siebel:
So what ranked choice voting does is it actually incentivizes politicians to broaden their coalition, incentivizes coalition building. And it sensitizes people to say, I may not be your first choice, but I would love to be your second choice. So they bring people in instead of pushing people away. That's a game changer in our incentives of how polarization has taken over our politics now. And we tend to demonize the people on the left and demonize the people on the right and demonize our opponents no matter who they are so that their vote totals go down. With ranked choice voting, that turns it on its head. And we want to have more participation in our government, have more people come out to vote, even if it's for a third party, you're going toward independence. And that's why ranked choice voting can help bridge the divide between some of these gaps that we have.
Emily Crocetti (reporter):
For example, consider this case of a surprisingly civilized election...in the city of Santa Fe.
Scott Siebel:
Santa Fe, New Mexico had their first ranked choice voting election for mayor. And there are five or six people running for mayor of Santa Fe. And what the local political reporters found as they were writing story after story about this is that there are actually stories that came out and said, why are all these mayoral candidates being so nice to each other? We're so used to the negative campaigning in this country. We're so used to saying, this person's bad, and you disagree with that. And people in Santa Fe seemed to like it.
Robert Pease (host):
Unfortunately, Emily, ranked choice voting also had a mixed result in 2020 state ballot initiatives passing in Alaska, but failing in Massachusetts.
Emily Crocetti (reporter):
That’s right. And the moderate Republlican Governor there, Charlie Baker, came out against ranked choice voting. Somewhat surprising because usually the minority party, such as Republicans in Massachusetts, support electoral changes.
Robert Pease (host):
We’ll have to look further into that, Emily. But there is another really big issue helping to polarize our country and that is money.
Emily Crocetti (reporter):
And the numbers are mind boggling, at least $14 billion spent on the 2020 election cycle. Nearly twice as much as 2016. Which was twice as much as 2008. And $14 billion is equal to the GDP of a small country like Malta.
Robert Pease (host):
But a number of groups are working hard to raise awareness and promote legislation regarding transparency and public financing of elections. We spoke with Joan Mandle of Democracy Matters.
Emily Crocetti (reporter):
She’s the Executive Director of this two decade old organization formed with her adopted son and former college and NBA basketball star, Adonal Foyle.
Joan Mandle:
Really, it was through conversations with Adonal because he founded it as much as we did, certainly. He said that when he was at Colgate, his friends were all involved in lots of really interesting things. You know, they were tutoring students in high school, they were doing environmental work. They were interested in women's issues, but hardly anybody was thinking about politics. Adonal said, you know, I really talked to people all the time about how we need to think politically. And we need to think about elections if we're really going to change anything. It's great to do volunteer work, but that doesn't really change the world. And it certainly doesn't change the United States very much. So we thought about it for a while. And I had been involved for many years with an organization called Common Cause, which had done a lot around the issue of campaign finance reform. And once we talked it through, Adonyl said, well, I think that'd be a great thing to do, to start college chapters. And later we did high school chapters of Democracy Matters, so that students can influence each other. They can learn how to do grassroots organizing and influencing each other to get them to understand all the specific issues they care about. If you look underneath them, almost all of them are influenced by the role of big money in politics.
Emily Crocetti (reporter):
That is interesting. And it’s clearly important to get young people thinking about the whole system, not just favorite issues. But what about the Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court, which seemed to secure the role of big money in politics?
Joan Mandle:
We started in 2000 and the Citizens United decision was 2010. So we had been working for a decade before that decision. But when Citizens United came along, suddenly lots of people got interested in money and politics. There was really an outrage in the country, because it meant that corporations and unions and individuals were able to give unlimited amounts of money. Not to candidates – this an important point – not directly to their campaigns, but they could spend as much money as they wanted trying to influence the elections by ads or other ways, And so we had really good traction after 2010 because of Citizens United.
Robert Pease (host):
Based on that increased awareness, we wondered what specific initiatives might make an impact?
Joan Mandle:
Really the only recourse to thinking about how you're going to change money in politics is to look at direct campaign contributions. And in fact, that money is larger than the super PAC money. So if we could move in the direction of getting public financing – and by the way, since 2010, there have been many victories that we've had in cities and states to institute public financing – it really is the only recourse we have right now, given the Supreme Court decision. So we try to convince people, and it's not been really hard, that public financing is the way to go.
Emily Crocetti (reporter):
And what about the guiding philosophy at Democracy Matters?
Joan Mandle:
One definition of democracy is that every citizen should have an equal opportunity to influence the laws and the policies under which they live. And that clearly is interfered with and harmed by the fact that we now have such a very small group of very wealthy people who are influencing our politics.
Robert Pease (host):
So Emily, to sum up there’s a lot of forces pulling us apart. Gerrymandering is huge.
Emily Crocetti (reporter):
And independent commissions are a possible solution there, though only 10 states have them so far.
Robert Pease (host):
Closed or semi-closed party-run primaries that exclude independents – another major polarity.
Emily Crocetti (reporter):
For sure. And only about half of our states have open or semi-open primaries, but Alaska just joined that party.
Robert Pease (host):
Or possibly that anti-party party. Because we also have the two party death spiral, generously financed by special interests and energized by negative partisanship.
Emily Crocetti (reporter):
And ranked choice voting may be of some help there in moderating candidates from both parties, and possibly even electing some independents at local or state levels if groups like FairVote gain traction.
Robert Pease (host):
But in the meantime there is another group working on all the above fronts as well as that strategy you just mentioned: electing moderates in both parties. Unite America was founded by our first featured guest on The Purple Principle, Charles Wheelan, a former candidate for Congress.
Emily Crocetti (reporter):
And currently a professor of public policy at my alma mater, Dartmouth College.
Charles Wheelan:
So we have a fund that is investing in two prongs. One is process reforms, ranked choice voting, anti gerrymandering. Our second prong is supporting candidates, and we are supporting both Democrats in Democratic primaries and moderate Republicans in Republican primaries and paying fastidious attention to the number of races and nature of races so that people don't look up at us as closet reds or closet blues. It's a terribly close line, you know, because one of the things that characterizes this climate is, if I don't know what you are, I just assume you're my enemy, you know? Oh, you're an independent. Oh, you must be a Trump supporter. You're an innovator. Oh, you're a Nancy Polosi lackey. There's so much fear out there that if you're not dressed in my uniform, you gotta be with the other guy.
Robert Pease (host):
Prior to backing moderates from both parties, Unite America had worked to elect independent candidates. We asked how big a shift that was in their thinking.
Charles Wheelan:
The goal hasn't changed. It flows from everything we've talked about, which is to somehow re-empower the political center so we can govern again. What we've kind of left implied but have not said explicitly is you can't govern a country without a middle. So we would like to re-empower the middle so that you can build coalitions across parties and create more practical and durable solutions. Now, what has changed is the strategy for achieving that. Our initial strategy was to elect independents, which I still think would work if they got into office. I still think that fulcrum of the center would be extremely powerful. The problem was, as we discussed, this is just too hard to elect independents in this climate. So we pivoted after a miserable showing in 2018 to supporting moderate Democrats and Republicans in primaries with the hope and the promise from them that they will create a bipartisan governing coalition when they get into office.
Emily Crocetti (reporter):
Which makes sense, except what about the backlash from the more extreme elements in both parties working against the middle?
Charles Wheelan:
There's certainly going to be backlash from the wing nuts. I mean, that's what they do very well. I think it's incumbent on us to be very clear about what the strategy is and why we're doing it and to be even handed in the application of that. So we actually count up the number of races where we're supporting Republicans in primaries. Some very conservative people by the way, but they're in very conservative states. I’ve had conversations with someone in New York and I'll say, look, you need to support the Senate candidate in Utah. And the person in New York says, well, you know, he's pro-life. I'm not pro-life. And I say it's bloody Utah! Like, what do you expect? Like he should be pro-life. He represents a constituency that’s pro-life. So what I'm telling you in New York is, he's not going to represent New York. He's going to represent Utah in a way that is closer to your views than the other person running in Utah. And I think you’ve got to get your mind around, first of all, in other places they have legitimate other views and it's not just red or blue, it's what flavor of red or blue and you in New York or California may benefit enormously from having a more moderate flavor of red in the chamber. And vice versa.
Robert Pease (host):
So Emily, again, so many forces out there pulling the U.S. apart. There’s all that lovely gerrymandering, and our polarizing primaries and the ever growing campaign finance industry.
Emily Crocetti (reporter):
But there are committed groups and individuals working to combat those polarities, and having some success.
Robert Pease (host):
Maybe the best example there was the recent passage of Alaska Ballot Measure Two, which created open unified primaries, ranked choice voting and greater campaign finance transparency in our country’s most indie-minded state.
Emily Crocetti (reporter):
To learn more about that Ballot Measure, listen to Episode 19, “Declaration of Independents, Alaska Style.”
Robert Pease (host):
And please stay tuned to Season 2 of the Purple Principle, kicking off in March. We’ll visit with other important individuals and groups working to depolarize our climate. People like Jillian Youngblood of Civic Genius. This group holds bipartisan Citizen Panels that point the way toward more civilized political discourse.
Jillian Youngblood:
And some people will say it actually changed my mind, which does happen occasionally. More often people will say, I think I still know how I feel, but I get it a little bit better. And I think that I could compromise on this issue a little bit.
Emily Crocetti (reporter):
And we’ll talk with the noted historian and columnist, Julian Zelizer on how former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich paved the way for extreme partisanship and reactionary conservatism. His recent biography on Gingrich is entitled, Burning Down the House.
Julian Zelizer:
A lot of Republicans told Gingrich this isn't the best idea for your first target. This is an African American who's very respected and you're going to fulfill the idea that the new southern Republicans are basically backlash politicians playing on the politics of race, but he doesn't care. He moves forward with it.
Robert Pease (host):
For more information on these and other episodes, visit our website, purpleprinciple.com, where feedback and input is always welcome. Please also share us on social media and review us on Apple Music. This is Robert Pease and Emily Crocetti for the Purple Principle team: Alison Byrne, Producer; Kevin A. Kline, all things audio; Emily Holloway, Research and Outreach; Johnnie Dowling, Research Associate. Original music composed and created by Ryan Adair Rooney.
