The Democratic Party wants to put a presidential candidate in front of the American public that is appealing enough to win the election without offending key stakeholders and constituencies.
These include the groups it depends on in its current incarnation, for example, billionaire donors, voters of color, suburban women, etc... Young voters have been considered a “nice to have” stakeholder by the party, not a must have, in part due to them making themselves dispensable by not voting, and in part by their higher propensity to support positions at odds with the billionaire donors. This ambivalence might of course ultimately destroy the party, but that is being treated as a “later problem”.
It’s a VERY hard problem to identify and elevate one presidential candidate that such a big, broad tent of stakeholders can all rally behind. And so what the DNC chooses to do in terms of conduct of the presidential primary process is a BIG DEAL of massive consequence.
The history
The partial realization of the idea of “popularly chosen” presidential nominees traces back most recently to the Democratic Party’s McGovern-Fraser Commission formed after the convention in Chicago in 1968, which itself was in a line of openings in public participation in elections and primaries historically. There have been continued modifications, most notably recent changes in super-delegates after the contentious 2016 primary with Bernie Sanders, and adjustments in the last few years to the primary calendar.
The current Democratic Presidential primary process is an absolute mess. The current nomination contest design is based on the need to create a credible appearance of a small “d” democratic process, while providing enough back doors and “curtains with men behind them” for party insider control.
It’s ultimately a choice between democratic choice and guardianship by the party elite. Should party elites/insiders use their expertise and resources to pick the best nominee to represent the party and compete in the general or does the public know best? Should party leaders embrace participation and defer to the “wisdom of crowds”?
The problem with the present
At a high level, there are two massive problems with the current situation:
1.) The current process is very badly designed for structuring a nomination decision, whether it be by the people or by elites. It’s inefficient and ineffective.
2.) In case the leaders of the DNC haven’t noticed, we the public are so totally skeptical of anything elites do, that pretending to have a democratic process while actually preserving elite decision making is completely counterproductive to trust and buy-in. It’s widely acknowledged that in winning voters over with political communication today, authenticity is the coin of the realm. So either stand up a truly democratic process, or be clear that elites are going to make the call, and share the reasons why, and own it. Don’t make everyone go through this painful, expensive, long-drawn-out song and dance of a primary process, as if our participation matters.
The present failure as a democratic process
From a democracy standpoint the current process is an absolute disaster:
1.) Poor level of public participation. Turnout in primaries a fraction of the general. Hard for voters in many states to even figure out when the election is. Need to have better communication of election time and consistent access to election information and the ballot across the country.
2.) Poor delivery of information about candidates. News outlets cover the horse race. Candidate ads are superficial at best. Social media favors the performative, sensational, and algorithm sensitivity skills of the candidates digital communications teams.
3.) Most states’ votes barely matter, as the field has been winnowed and the front runner(s) decided in the first few waves of primary voting states — the trends and momentum have been set. It’s ironic that the “party of democracy” that overwhelmingly favors a “National Popular Vote” allows this to stand.
4.) The “proportional” delegate allocation with “thresholds” reduces voters’ ability to choose and wastes votes. Candidates who don’t hit 15% of the vote get nothing so voters are forced into voting for front runners. More choice means more voting splitting between similar candidates and less accurate outcomes. Ranked Choice Voting fixes this.
5.) Early voting and pick-one ballots result in millions of votes going to candidates that drop out of the race — aka, “zombie votes”. Ranked Choice Voting fixes this.
6.) Inequities of campaign finance. A big deal. Don’t need to say much more about this.
The present failure as an elite-led process
1.) The party is forced to pretend to honor democratic norms while either having conditions forced upon it, or creating conditions, that undermine democratic outcomes. This undermines confidence in the outcomes, the party, or more likely both. It makes democracy seem impossible.
2.) The process is long and drawn out in a resource intensive and attention draining way. Messed up, confusing results create more anxiety and distrust than interest.
3.) It’s a lot of work and money to stack the field to try to create the right split amongst non-elite preferred factions and try to stage manage the outcome. Getting non-viable or politically compliant progressives to run and split the vote with the Bernie candidate. Clearing the field when you need to consolidate (think of Buttigieg, Harris, Klobuchar, etc., getting out for Biden in 2020). Finding a state where you can create the conditions you need to create legitimacy for the nominee through a “king making” event with the party elite’s favorite candidate — like South Carolina in 2020 for Biden.
4.) Much of the focus in “stage managing” since 2016 has been party elites working to undermine the Bernie Sanders inspired left. Whether you justify this from the standpoint of being able to win the general election, or oppose it, it has been disrupting the unity and energy of the Democratic Party.
Pros and cons of a fully democratic process
At its best, in a well-run democratic process…
1.) You get candidates to compete and innovate around probing the electorate, unearthing their deepest concerns, and vetting potential solutions with a wide cross-section of the public and various subgroups and communities.
2.) You get buy-in of your base with the nominee from a sense of real participation.
3.) Through the competition you get stronger initial vetting of your nominee, as candidates teams invest in finding their opponents weaknesses.
Challenges of a fully democratic process…
1.) No guarantee of convergence of opinion. The value of ultimate alignment and uniting around the most popular choice needs to be engendered. If done well and embraced by candidates and voters, can be very powerful. If not, can be a real problem.
2.) Ensuring broad participation and avoiding special interest capture, especially when turnout is weak.
3.) Ensuring the electorate is well informed.
4.) Ensuring fair access for candidates and communities of interest to informing the electorate.
5.) Your large funder stakeholders, essential to providing the resources to compete in elections, may also be special interests that are antithetical to the broader interests of your electoral base. The people in their own accurate self-interest, may undermine the interests funding the party the people are closest to, thus potentially undermining the people’s “lesser of two evils” party choice in another way.
Pros and cons of a largely elite-centered process
At its best, an elite process…
1.) The party’s leadership can ensure disruptive forces that might divide the party and its stakeholders or take the party off brand and mission are held at bay.
2.) Creates an environment where well resourced political expertise can be put to use efficiently.
3.) May be easier to make tough choices and resist capture, especially compared with a low-participation electorate that can be subject to special interest influence.
Challenges of an elite process…
1.) Less accountability for the direction and execution of the party’s plan. Easier for party insiders or experts to become untethered from public opinion and delude themselves, producing a nominee doomed to failure.
2.) Harder to rationalize the result and get buy in with the public that did not have the same type of input.
3.) Absolute power corrupts absolutely - easier for your party leadership to wander if the only check is losing the general over and over. They’re getting other benefits along the way, even while losing.
4.) Really hard to justify elite focused processes when we are talking about a general election process with only two viable major party choices. In this context, not giving the public a say in the decision of the party they most agree with is greatly limiting the value of the franchise.
What Ranked Choice Voting has to do with any of this
Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) is a better way to vote where instead of picking a single candidate, voters can rank them in the order they like them. There are lots of resources where you can learn about this. Below are some of them.
About ranked choice voting (RCV)
About RCV in general…
What we know about Ranked Choice Voting… from ABA Task Force for American Democracy
About RCV for Presidential Primaries:
How does ranked choice voting work in democratic presidential primaries? August 7, 2026 Candice Nolde, FairVote
On today’s apparently aborted ban (Yay!): Alex Rouhandeh on X
Christine Pelosi on X (video) explaining why she supported removing the proposed DNC RCV ban
Some Establishment Democrats Want to Ban Ranked-Choice Voting, August 12, 2026 Rob Richie
DNC’s Ranked Choice Voting Ban Is More Than Inside Baseball, August 13, 2026 Cynthia Richie Terrell
RCV has many benefits that would improve all US elections by increasing voter choice and accuracy of results, and those benefits would be particularly powerful in Democratic Party Presidential Primaries. By all means, learn about this if you haven’t already. IMO, it’s clear cut. People who spend time opposing this while claiming to support democratic processes are either in bad faith or just have bad brains (unfortunate). Hate to say it, but it’s that clear.
So why did members of Democratic National Committee’s Rules and Bylaws Committee propose banning RCV use in its Presidential nominating contests?
It all comes back to the democratic model vs. an elite model for nominations. The current primary structure allows input from the public through elections. This could give the public power to choose. But the party elites still want to control.
Elites have power through moving money around and through use of their communication channels. But to get closer to full control of the field, they need to be able to secretly weaken the candidates that they don’t like and don’t control, and one of the best hidden ways to do this is to be able to get non-viable candidates to run against them on similar issue platforms and split the vote. Ranked choice undermines this undemocratic strategy.
They also need to put teeth in the 15% of the vote threshold for obtaining delegates because that forces voters to choose the well-funded frontrunners. RCV eliminates these teeth by ensuring that voters ballots can first count towards any candidate they like, and if that fails, then go to a front runner.
So for party insiders who prefer an elite-led nomination process in the guise of a democratic process, ranked choice voting is a big no-no. And it should be no surprise that one of the leaders of this effort on the DNC rules committee is life-long party insider from my home state of Massachusetts, octogenarian James Roosevelt, Jr., grandson of, yes, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Jim represents almost everything that most progressive Democratic Party voters do not want to see leading the party: A corporate legal advisor, longtime legal counsel for the MassDems, former Healthcare Executive. Obtained some notoriety in 2020 for being a ringleader in an anti-gay smear campaign run by the MassDems leadership against a young and successful three term mayor, Alex Morse, who was running a compelling effort against 30+ year incumbent Richie Neal in the Congressional Primary. Neal was in line for likely ascendancy to Chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, a coveted and powerful post.
What is the real opportunity for the Democrats?
Not banning Ranked choice voting in 2028 allows a handful of states and territories to use it. This leaves the door open for progress to continue.
Making Ranked Choice Voting mandatory for Democratic Party Presidential nomination contests in all states and territories would be a HUGE step forward for those who want a truly democratic process.
It wouldn’t solve everything: there would still be an issue of which voters are allowed to vote (do they need to be enrolled in the party?), there would still be the timing of the contests in different states, which disenfranchises tens of millions of voters in most contests. There would still be the campaign finance regime, the access to quality information about the candidates and issues, and access, promotion, and participation of the vote. But it would be an amazing start and yield transformational changes. But DNC members will likely tell you (in their honest opinion) that the DNC cannot mandate RCV because state election laws don’t support this.
In the past, running a little d democratic nomination process had the parties’ hands tied to a degree because they have depended on state public election infrastructure to run these elections. It would be an incredible undertaking for the party to privately administer these with widespread access, security, and integrity.
Most believe this is still true, but it is not anymore.
No limits - What’s possible today for how to run a presidential nomination contest
There are electronic voting options, including mobile voting, that could allow the national party, with or without the help of state parties, to administer nominating elections for president on their own, with security, integrity, and very cost-effective price points.
Now no longer depending on state government infrastructure means that the national parties could literally, legally do just about anything they want with their primaries, making them as democratic or elite governed, or whatever else in between that they want to. There is no constraint, technical, legal, or financial, except their own will and imagination — and their politics.
The DNC could literally wave a magic wand and REQUIRE all states to conduct the Democratic Party primaries with ranked choice voting, with all the benefits that would come with that.
There is no major constitutional issue.
There is no constraints related to the electoral college.
They don’t need federal government permission.
They don’t need state government permission.
They don’t even need state party permissions.
The DNC could just do it. It sounds absolutely crazy in this world of millions of explanations for “Why we can’t have nice things”, but it’s true.
The DNC could literally decide their nominee by pulling a name out of a hat, playing spin the bottle, doing a lottery, drawing straws, duck-duck-goose — all really dumb ideas for this particular purpose.
But they could also design and run an incredibly productive and engaging process, that takes America’s political conversation to a level it’s never been, and capture the attention and imagination of more people than it ever has.
To achieve that, they could have every state vote on the same day or week. They could winnow the field over several rounds of debates — they could do brackets like March madness. The sky is the limit!
When the Dems were in crisis after Biden was forced to step down in 2024, there were some creative suggestions, even in elite circles, about how to choose Biden’s replacement. Ultimately, Dems went with an elite driven process to select Kamala Harris — reasonably justified by the time constraints.
But there was recognition of a need for more engaging process that would deliver a nominee with more public buy in. Some influential people I know thinking about this even floated the idea of an “America’s Got Talent” style contest. Imagine — we could use a process that glues millions to their TV to evaluate pop singers to choose a party’s candidate for President…
Where do we go from here?
Once you see what technology can do, and what the law has actually already allowed, you realize the full scope of what is now possible.
And if for no other reason, to turn back the tide of distrust and cynicism in politics we need this. In the business world, you learn about decision making models and what makes them succeed or fail. They can be participatory, consensus, top down — many flavors. But key to the successful implementation of any decision making model amongst a group of people is transparency about and adherence to the process. That would be a radical departure to the presidential primary process we have been using for decades.
If the Democrats want to prove they can govern the country with innovation and leveraging both people-powered democracy and elite talent, they should start by showing they can design and run an amazing nominating contest for the Presidency.
It could be fully democratic in design, or it could be a hybrid with some transparently acknowledged areas of special elite input. Realistically, politically, I don’t think a new admittedly closed or even transparent elite led process will work in the moment we are in — we saw that movie in 2024. The new process could be an amazing experience with the type of political dialog, discussion, debate that we read about in history books.
We have the technology. Democrats can actually control their own destiny here. The only thing stopping us is political will. If you are a Democrat, you should demand more and better.
We’re doing RCV for the second time in the Boulder mayoral race. The current mayor was the second choice of so many people that he won. The next race there will be a Black woman running imaginary the incumbent. With RCV, she may have a better chance. Interestingly, that may be the real stress test. 😂 Hopefully if RCV spreads more, true independents may get opportunities they wouldn’t have with the duopoly.