Dr. Danielle Allen views all-party primaries as a tool for fully enfranchising all voters, especially the 65% of Massachusetts voters who are unenrolled. The percentage of unenrolled voters is even higher among voters of color and young voters.
In Massachusetts, just one in five registered voters votes in the primaries. That means that a small slice of voters choose who will be on the general election ballot and the rest – the vast majority of voters – have to live with those choices. In theory, our elected officials are accountable to the people and act on the issues we all care about. In practice, when most of us aren’t represented in the primaries, elected officials can stop listening.
Dr. Danielle Allen believes that all-party primaries can change that. She leads the Coalition for a Healthy Democracy, which is working to pass a ballot initiative (Question 3) that would establish all-party primaries, in which all voters – regardless of party registration – vote on a single ballot that includes all candidates running for office.
Dr. Allen’s advocacy for all-party primaries derives from what she calls “an obsessive commitment to democracy.” Her grandfather faced the threat of lynching to help found one of the first NAACP chapters in northern Florida in the 1940s. And her great grandparents fought for women’s right to vote early in the 20th century. Dr. Allen’s own journey to democracy reform is driven by her growing understanding that our current systems discourage voter engagement.
CLF supports Ballot Question 3, and we recently invited Dr. Allen to talk about her work and why all-party primaries matter. We’ve adapted our wide-ranging conversation for clarity and length.
CLF: Why do you do what you refer to as “democracy renovation” work, in addition to your work as an academic?
Dr. Allen: I lost my youngest cousin, Michael, in 2009. He was shot and killed, and that was just a real stop-me-in-my-tracks kind of moment. I was a political scientist, an expert in democracy and civic society. And in that moment, I had this sense of my own confidence in our democracy crumbling underneath me. We embrace these ideals of freedom and equality, but when we do, the entire purpose is that it should make it possible for every generation to do a bit better than the previous. But democracy isn’t working for large swaths of our population, and I saw that happening in my own family.
After I lost my cousin Michael, I started working on criminal justice reform. That work, though, quickly taught me that even where there were common sense and cross-partisan solutions, especially at the federal level, it was essentially impossible to get them through. The dysfunction, the polarization, in D.C. had just blocked everything.
In 2013, Congress had an approval rating of 9%. And for me, that 9% rating was my red alert for our democracy. That said to me that this thing is broken. Congress is the first branch. It is supposed to be the voice of the people. And if we, the people, approve of our own voice at a rate of 9%, it’s broken. So at that point I pivoted to what I call democracy renovation work. This work is about reconnecting people to their civic experience, power, and responsibility. It is also about redesigning our institutions so that they actually are responsive when people try to bring change.
CLF: What does democracy renovation work look like in practice, here in Massachusetts?
Dr. Allen: About 5 years ago, I found myself visiting with communities all over the Commonwealth, just trying to understand their challenges and what was on people’s minds.
As a part of that listening work, I registered that in Massachusetts, communities of color feel much more disconnected from our institutions and democracy than other communities. And it came home to me particularly powerfully one day in Springfield. I visited a church called Spring of Hope. It’s a beautiful church community, a sort of evangelical Black community, with a very powerful service. After the service, folks stayed for a community meeting.
People had really clear diagnoses of challenges in Springfield – asthma from pollution being number one, and issues of housing, rent and eviction, policing and the quality of schools. They had lots of diagnoses and really good ideas for solutions. At the end of the conversation, because we were headed towards an election year, I said, “So you’re gonna vote, right?” And I was just really stunned by how many people said no.
I was surprised because this was a group of highly engaged, highly informed people. But they were actively choosing not to vote. It wasn’t apathy; it wasn’t about not having information at their fingertips. So, I asked, “Why not?” And it turns out the answer wasn’t rocket science. The answer was, there are no choices on the ballot.
The honest ones were saying: What’s the point? It is not rational for me to get time off work, or to figure out how to juggle childcare in order to go to the polls, because there are literally no choices on the ballot.
CLF: How did that meeting in Springfield lead to your work on what became Question 3?
Dr. Allen: That moment really stayed with me, and I followed it by diving into a period of research. And I learned some things I should always have known, including that Massachusetts has fewer contested elections than any state in the country.
I also learned that for our statewide offices, we have the most restrictive rules for candidate ballot access.
We have, therefore, fewer candidates running for statewide offices, including fewer members of the legislature who try for statewide office compared to other states. And that means fewer open seats. This fall, for example, two-thirds of our state legislative seats are uncontested.
CLF: Why do uncontested races matter?
Dr. Allen: It’s pretty straightforward. You don’t have elected officials who have to listen to the people. They can take voters for granted. This is the problem.
And what’s the solution? How are you going to get a responsive, accountable legislature that will listen to people? You’ve got to have competitive elections.
So, I worked with colleagues at Partners in Democracy, a nonprofit organization, and, over several years, they did a lot of research into potential solutions. And at the end of that long period of time, what rose to the surface was an all-party primary as the single most feasible, impactful change that could get us competitive elections and elected officials who have to listen to the voters.
CLF: What’s an all-party primary? How is it different from traditional primaries?
Dr. Allen: An all-party primary is a single ballot for all candidates from all parties.
Every voter gets the same ballot, regardless of which party you registered with. You go to the ballot for the primary, you pick your favorite person, and the top two vote-getters go forward to the general.
Municipal elections in Boston already kind of work this way. In that primary — it’s called a nonpartisan preliminary — all the candidates are on the same ballot, and then the top two go forward. The difference is that in the all-party primary, people still run with their party labels, so you can tell what position people come from.
CLF: Are there other ways that an all-party ballot will impact voters and potentially help produce a more responsive legislature?
Dr. Allen: Sixty five percent of voters in Massachusetts are unenrolled in either party, so this is also a measure that fully enfranchises them. Right now, when you walk into the voting booth, you have to pick a ballot, Republican or Democrat, for that election. In September, you had to decide: Do you want to vote in the contested Senate primary? Do you want to vote in the contested gubernatorial primary? But you couldn’t vote in both. If we had an all-party primary, any time you walk in, you get all the choices on your ballot – no choosing a Democrat or Republican ballot.
Another change that this measure would bring about is that unenrolled candidates would be able to run in the primary, just like everybody else. They don’t have to wait until the general election and show up as an independent no one has heard of. They can actually appear on the primary ballot. And that creates more choices for voters as well. That means voters always have a competitive election to engage with, so they have a reason to go to the polls. In this model, voters will not be taken for granted.
CLF: What you’re seeing in terms of coalitions that have been building against your ballot initiative? Has any of the opposition surprised you?
Dr. Allen: I don’t know, maybe this shouldn’t have been surprising, but the Republican State Committee and the Democratic State Committee both passed resolutions against it. These are the two groups that are usually on opposite sides of a question. But they’re the gatekeepers, right? Trying to maintain control of the system. This really is a project of trying to overcome gatekeeping power.
CLF: How do all party primaries help those voters in Springfield that got you started on this path?
Dr. Allen: I want to come back to that number — 65% of people in Massachusetts who are not enrolled in either party. That percentage is higher for young people. It is higher for communities of color. The general electorate is younger and more diverse than the primary electorate, so when we switch to the all-party primary, we make each election more meaningful. Right now, only one in five voters turns up for the primaries, which makes sense with so many uncontested primary races. All-party primaries give every registered voter an opportunity to choose the candidates who will advance to the general election. It also ensures that the general electorate gets to make the decisive choice of who represents them. That is an enfranchisement action.
We in Massachusetts have the chance to really make sure that we’re moving forward an election mechanism that keeps elected officials accountable to the whole people, not just to that closed, small percentage that are turning out to vote in the primary.
