CSPAN - Washington Journal Nick Troiano
Aired: 2026-04-04
Duration: 38:59


=== Confidence in Free Elections (09:02) ===

[00:00:00]  Sometimes people will look and say, well, it looks really dirty.
[00:00:03]  Why don't you clean it?
[00:00:04]  That's not dirt.
[00:00:05]  That's the evidence of all the hard work that happened.
[00:00:07]  The Smithsonian Institution, National Air and Space Museum's Jennifer Levasser.
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[00:01:05]  C-SPAN, Democracy Unfiltered.
[00:01:12]  Joining us this morning is Nick Trojano.
[00:01:14]  He's the executive director of Unite America and also author of the book, The Primary Solution, Rescuing Our Democracy from the Fringes, here to talk about election reform.
[00:01:26]  Nick Trojano, let's begin with a new poll that was conducted recently.
[00:01:32]  And when they asked your confidence in your state local governments will run a fair election, 34% said they were very confident or confident.
[00:01:43]  66% said they're not very or not confident at all.
[00:01:49]  Your reaction.
[00:01:51]  Well, I think Americans should be confident that they'll be able to cast a ballot in a free and fair election this year, but they shouldn't be confident that vote will actually matter because most elections by the time that November rolls around will have already been decided in low turnout party primaries.
[00:02:09]  And that's the core problem with our election system today.
[00:02:12]  It's again not about whether we can trust if our ballots can be counted.
[00:02:16]  They will.
[00:02:17]  It's about whether we can trust if our elected officials and the candidates running to represent us will actually listen to us.
[00:02:24]  Because the sad reality is that it's only a small fraction of voters in the party base that actually have all the influence because of the way our system is designed around party primaries today.
[00:02:35]  And what role does gerrymandering play in that and the fights in states like Texas and California that have played out this year?
[00:02:47]  Well, partisan gerrymandering is a scourge on our democracy because what it essentially means is that politicians are choosing their voters rather than the other way around by virtue of how they're drawing lines for our congressional districts.
[00:03:00]  And in an unprecedented way, we saw this year of states actually do that mid-cycle, not after the next census, but actually in the middle of the decade.
[00:03:09]  And it's been an arms race between both parties now to see who can gerrymander more, the result of which is that neither party is going to ultimately net out with much of an advantage.
[00:03:20]  The voters lose, however.
[00:03:22]  92% of U.S. House districts this year will be uncompetitive in November, which means 92% of our elected officials will be decided in the primaries that are happening right now when fewer than half of voters will be participating than compared to November.
[00:03:41]  And even worse, in 16 states, close to 17 million independent voters are going to be locked out of these elections that they pay for altogether because of closed party primaries.
[00:03:52]  So gerrymandering is a problem.
[00:03:54]  Party primaries exacerbate that problem.
[00:03:57]  The good news is that these problems can be fixed at the state level around the country, either through state legislatures or citizen ballot initiatives.
[00:04:06]  And that's when voters are taking power into their own hands to say that our democracy should represent them, not these political parties.
[00:04:14]  So what you were citing at the top was the Cook Political Report.
[00:04:17]  And according to their analysis, 399 of 435 seats, or 92%, are safe for one party in this midterm election.
[00:04:29]  Again, that is the problem that we're facing.
[00:04:32]  In fact, we call it the primary problem in our politics today.
[00:04:36]  Again, November's elections will determine which party controls Congress.
[00:04:40]  But these primaries that are happening right now will determine everything else, who gets elected, what issues they'll prioritize, how they will govern.
[00:04:48]  So it's really important that people vote in the primaries.
[00:04:51]  And it's even more important long term that we make sure these primaries are open to all voters and that candidates must win a true majority support to get elected.
[00:05:01]  Without doing this, we're going to be sending good people into a broken system where the incentives are to pander to their party base rather than work together to solve problems.
[00:05:12]  And that's why two-thirds of Americans right now don't feel represented by Congress.
[00:05:18]  Again, this is a fixable problem by virtue of the way that we design our election system.
[00:05:24]  When you call for an open primary, how does it work?
[00:05:28]  Well, in an open primary, every voter, every eligible voter will have the freedom to vote for any candidate that they want in every taxpayer-funded election.
[00:05:39]  There are five states that have what we would call open all-candidate primaries, which means on a single ballot, you get to choose your favorite candidate.
[00:05:47]  It could be a Republican for governor, a Democrat for Senate, maybe an Independent for your state legislature.
[00:05:52]  Then the top candidates advance to the general election where whoever wins majority support gets elected.
[00:05:59]  You know, under this system, there's more competition, which means that there's more accountability and better representation, which will produce better results on the issues that we care about, whether it's on healthcare, education, immigration, or growing debt.
[00:06:13]  If we want to fix any of those problems, we need to fix our political system because the system determines the incentives by which our leaders will govern.
[00:06:22]  How do you solve the problem, though, in that type of primary, where if you have more competition from Democratic party, in other words, you have five Democrats running, maybe only one or two Republicans running, and that Democratic vote gets diluted among those five, and perhaps the two Republicans are at the top of the ticket, the outcome, and it's those two Republicans that then advance.
[00:06:49]  Well, obviously some people are concerned about that scenario that may, that potentially could play out in the California governor's race this year, but I don't think that's likely to happen.
[00:06:59]  I think what will happen is that more support will consolidate around the front-runner candidates, and you're likely to see more choice, more competition, rather than less come the general election.
[00:07:09]  Some states like Alaska, for example, have improved upon that top two system, for example, by advancing the top four candidates to the general election.
[00:07:19]  Other states have experimented with using ranked ballots, which will produce an instant runoff in these elections to ensure or to mitigate against the risk of vote splitting.
[00:07:30]  No matter what system we're looking at, we have to compare it to the status quo.
[00:07:34]  And the status quo right now is that fewer than 8% of voters nationally are deciding over 90% of our elections in these low turnout party primaries.
[00:07:44]  We need to get rid of that system and replace it with one where every voter has a meaningful say in who represents them.
[00:07:51]  So what do you do?
[00:07:53]  How would you get states to adopt what you are suggesting?
[00:07:58]  You said only five states do it right now.
[00:08:01]  Yes, and that number is larger than it was just a few years ago because citizens at the state level can champion these reforms.
[00:08:08]  Alaska in 2020 passed a citizen ballot initiative that replaced its party primaries with all candidate primaries.
[00:08:15]  Citizens can also put pressure on their elected officials in state legislatures.
[00:08:20]  Last year in New Mexico, for example, there was a bipartisan bill that advanced to open the primaries to independent voters such that this year, over 330,000 voters in New Mexico who are unaffiliated with either party can vote.
[00:08:35]  There's similar bills like that in the state legislatures, including in Pennsylvania, for example.
[00:08:41]  So the good news is that no matter how broken the system seems today, we still have the tools to fix it.
[00:08:47]  It requires citizens getting involved to make those changes.
[00:08:52]  And how would independents play a role in an open primary system?
[00:08:58]  Well, independents are the largest and fastest voting bloc in the country today.

=== Campaign Finance and Power (03:05) ===

[00:09:03]  You know, they're turned off by the party purity on both sides, the inability to solve problems, don't feel at home comfortably in either political party.
[00:09:13]  But they're the ones that are most disadvantaged under the current system.
[00:09:17]  You know, in 16 states not even having the ability to cast a ballot in a primary.
[00:09:22]  So when we advance open primaries and all candidate primaries, independents will get more power and more voice in a system.
[00:09:30]  And I think that's a good thing because right now we see the partisanship and the polarization dominate in Congress.
[00:09:38]  And that's the biggest tragedy in our politics today.
[00:09:40]  It's not that we, the people, are hopelessly divided on issues.
[00:09:44]  It's that our Congress remains so, even when we can find agreement.
[00:09:47]  And that includes on tough issues like immigration.
[00:09:50]  You know, most Americans want to see a secure border, a modernized immigration system, a humane way of treating those that entered the country illegally.
[00:10:01]  But we've been vacillating between one extreme and another, between open borders under the prior president, between masked federal agents in streets under our current president.
[00:10:10]  That's not the type of policy that most Americans want to see.
[00:10:14]  They want our elected officials to work together and find common ground.
[00:10:17]  And I think as political independents gain more voice in our election system, we will see representatives have to represent that viewpoint more and better in our institutions.
[00:10:28]  All right.
[00:10:28]  Well, let's go to calls.
[00:10:29]  Frank in San Francisco, an independent.
[00:10:32]  Frank, good morning.
[00:10:33]  Welcome to the conversation.
[00:10:34]  Namaste, everybody.
[00:10:38]  I'm here in San Francisco.
[00:10:41]  I don't believe in political parties.
[00:10:43]  Political parties have way too much power.
[00:10:45]  The Democratic Party doesn't represent.
[00:10:48]  We're not being pandered to.
[00:10:50]  Democrats aren't being pandered to.
[00:10:52]  I mean, 8% of Democrats think we should stop arming Israel for their genocidal wars.
[00:10:59]  And yet all the party leadership, Hakeem Jeffries, APAC Shakur, Shucks Schumer, Shucks Tumer, they're all for it.
[00:11:08]  So how is this going to help?
[00:11:10]  It's not going to help.
[00:11:11]  We have a jungle primary in California, and we've got like a dozen Democrats running.
[00:11:16]  It's the top two vote getters who are going to be in the final.
[00:11:19]  So it's very likely we're going to have two Republicans running against each other.
[00:11:22]  Campaign finance.
[00:11:24]  That's the problem.
[00:11:25]  Okay, let's take up campaign finance.
[00:11:28]  Well, what we see playing out in primaries right now is millions of dollars being spent by special interest groups ranging from crypto now to AI to other narrow partisan interests.
[00:11:40]  Many of these PACs funded by ideological billionaires pouring dollars into our elections.
[00:11:48]  That challenge is exacerbated in a party primary system where there's very low turnout and those dollars can have maximum influence.
[00:11:55]  It's a high ROI strategy for those groups.
[00:11:59]  Our research has found that when we open primaries to all voters and expand the electorate, it dilutes the impact of those special interests and of money in politics.

=== Opening Closed Primaries (15:11) ===

[00:12:08]  So I think these issues are inextricably linked.
[00:12:12]  Richards next in Augusta, Georgia, Democratic Color.
[00:12:17]  Good morning.
[00:12:18]  I'm a former poll worker who checks ID cards to know what to look for on the IDs of the individuals that come in and vote.
[00:12:28]  And how is it that a man that wants to try to rig the absentee ballots, and he votes absentee ballot, and that it makes no sense of what he's trying to do, that rigging the voter registration and everything that everybody knows?
[00:12:50]  You have to show your birth certificate in order to be a, to prove that you're American citizen and that Colorado has one of the best absentee ballot programs in the country.
[00:13:00]  It makes no sense in that the dictator in the White House, the fascists, is that lost his mind and that voting in America is the best in the world and that he wants to go to a paper ballot.
[00:13:15]  Okay.
[00:13:15]  People need to realize.
[00:13:17]  Okay, I'll leave it there.
[00:13:18]  As the president has been advocating, Nick Toriana, as you know, for the Save America Act.
[00:13:23]  I just want to read the provisions of this.
[00:13:26]  Requires individuals to present an eligible photo ID before voting.
[00:13:31]  Requires states to obtain proof of citizenship in person when registering an individual to vote.
[00:13:38]  Requires states to remove non-citizens from existing voter roles.
[00:13:44]  It's already illegal for undocumented immigrants to cast a ballot in federal elections.
[00:13:49]  The Save America passed the House 218 to 213 with one Democratic vote in February, but stalled in the Senate amid arguments from Democrats that it would violate voting rights, and it's still stalled in the Senate.
[00:14:02]  Nick Toriana, your thoughts on the Save America Act.
[00:14:06]  Well, I think we ought to be skeptical when either party seeks to rewrite election rules unilaterally, especially at the federal level.
[00:14:15]  You know, Democrats tried that a few years ago with H.R.1.
[00:14:18]  Republicans are trying it today with the Save America Act.
[00:14:22]  What problem are they trying to solve is a good question to ask.
[00:14:26]  There's very, very few incidents of non-citizen voting right now.
[00:14:30]  Most states do have voter ID, which is popular.
[00:14:34]  Save America Act goes beyond that on proof of citizenship, which would place a pretty high burden on a lot of voters in terms of having to access their birth certificates or passports to prove citizenship.
[00:14:46]  I think we ought to be focused on where we can find bipartisan agreement to improve our elections.
[00:14:51]  There is a bill in Congress called the Let America Vote Act right now, for example, that would ensure every taxpayer-funded election is accessible by every eligible voter and opening our primaries, for example.
[00:15:05]  It also recodifies federal law to ban non-citizen voting.
[00:15:10]  That Let America Vote Act has Democrats and Republican co-sponsors on it, including the co-chairs of the Problem Solvers Caucus.
[00:15:19]  So I think we ought to be looking at ways to improve our elections in a way that can increase trust rather than undermine it by pursuing a unilateral partisan strategy.
[00:15:30]  A second headline to share on election reform, the Washington Post, Trump orders attempts to change rules for mail-in voting.
[00:15:38]  The president signed a sweeping executive order Tuesday that purports to change rules for mail ballots, even though the president has limited authority over elections.
[00:15:48]  The order directs the U.S. Postal Service to send ballots only to voters who appear on a list of citizens to be compiled by the Department of Homeland Security with the assistance of the Social Security Administration.
[00:16:01]  The order also specifies what types of secure envelopes are to be used for mail ballots.
[00:16:06]  Now, Democrats sued the president over this executive order yesterday, saying the Constitution gives the power over elections to states and Congress.
[00:16:17]  Nick Trojano, pick up on the Democrats' argument.
[00:16:22]  Well, I think the main point here is that the president has very limited authority over federal elections.
[00:16:29]  What the Constitution says is that the time, place, and manner of our elections is decided at the state level.
[00:16:35]  It also reserves Congress the ability to make changes for federal elections.
[00:16:41]  It gives no ability to the president to unilaterally make changes to our elections, and that's for good reason.
[00:16:47]  Why would we want an individual, president of either political party, getting to rewrite the rules, for example, of how they might be re-elected?
[00:16:56]  So we have a challenge right now of our president and the Congress actually reading and following our Constitution.
[00:17:04]  Article 1 gives Congress a lot of power, including not just on elections, but on war powers, on taxation, on trade, on emergency powers.
[00:17:14]  And what we've seen over time is that that power be usurped by the president, in part because the separation of powers has been replaced by the separation of parties.
[00:17:24]  When we have party primaries that reinforce party discipline, Congress gives away its power to the president, and that's undermining our constitutional system of self-government in pretty dangerous ways right now.
[00:17:37]  Before we go back to calls, how is Unite America trying to address the primary problem, as you call it?
[00:17:45]  Well, we're working with partners at the state level across the country to advance nonpartisan reforms that can give voters more voice and choice in their elections.
[00:17:55]  Right now, we're active in 10 states trying to prevent state legislatures from closing party primaries, which would be deeply unpopular among voters across the political spectrum.
[00:18:07]  We're also engaged in states that are trying to open their closed party primaries.
[00:18:12]  A good example of that is in Pennsylvania right now, where there's a bipartisan bill that would enfranchise over a million independent voters who are currently locked out of the system.
[00:18:22]  And so we're building the support structure to help partner organizations around the country to make these elections changes as part of a great tradition we have in our country over the last 250 years of fixing our democracy where it has gone wrong.
[00:18:39]  You know, 100 years ago, for example, there was no direct election of senators.
[00:18:44]  Women didn't have the right to vote.
[00:18:46]  There was no such thing as ballot initiatives.
[00:18:48]  There weren't even primaries to begin with.
[00:18:50]  These elections were decided in smoke-filled rooms by party bosses.
[00:18:55]  All of the ways that our democracy has improved is as a result of efforts to fix it.
[00:19:01]  And so we're continuing that tradition as we come up on the 250th anniversary of our country.
[00:19:08]  And I think that is what has made our democracy the brightest in the world.
[00:19:13]  Let's go to the map from Ballotpedia.
[00:19:16]  You promoted earlier, rank voting.
[00:19:18]  Look at the map on the United States.
[00:19:20]  The state in orange is where rank choice voting is prohibited.
[00:19:27]  The gray states have no state laws addressing ranked choice voting.
[00:19:33]  The states in light blue or teal have use of rank choice voting in limited cases.
[00:19:40]  And then in green, we can see here that's what?
[00:19:43]  Two states, right, Nick?
[00:19:45]  Yes.
[00:19:46]  Two states that have ranked choice voting.
[00:19:49]  And how does it work?
[00:19:51]  Well, instead of only being able to choose one candidate under ranked choice voting, you have the option of ranking candidates according to preference.
[00:19:59]  And the benefit of that is that if no candidate earns majority support, the election already knows the backup preferences so that there can be an instant runoff.
[00:20:10]  Now, compare that to how the system works today in Texas, for example, in the Senate race on the Republican side, no candidate cleared the 50% threshold.
[00:20:19]  So voters have to go back to the ballot in a few weeks to weigh in again on that runoff.
[00:20:25]  And tens of millions of more dollars will have been raised and spent by the candidates.
[00:20:29]  Wouldn't have it been great that instead in the primary, if voters got to rank the candidates and if no one got 50% plus one, the candidate with the least support would be dropped and their supporters' second choice votes would be counted.
[00:20:44]  We would have had a result already.
[00:20:46]  So ranked choice voting is just a better, faster, and cheaper way of making sure that the outcome of elections represents a true majority.
[00:20:55]  And when you combine that with an open all-candidate primary, as Alaska does, you get a system in which voters have more power and more choice in elections and where candidates have to truly represent and build a broad-based coalition, which impacts the way that they govern.
[00:21:12]  And in Alaska, for example, there are now bipartisan governing coalitions in both the state House and State Senate that have worked with each other on passing timely budgets, on increasing education funding, which is quite popular in the state.
[00:21:26]  So these election rules changes isn't just about a technocratic movement of a better way to hold an election.
[00:21:33]  It's about a better way to govern and a better way to address the issues that most voters care about.
[00:21:38]  We'll go to Michael, who's in Connecticut Independent.
[00:21:40]  Michael, welcome to the conversation.
[00:21:43]  Good morning.
[00:21:44]  My question is that college electric vote, I think we should abandon that.
[00:21:53]  The popular vote.
[00:21:54]  My second question is: if a professor like the president is a convicted felon, how he could run for president?
[00:22:06]  And then, but as a convicted felon, a lot of people lose their right to vote.
[00:22:12]  He finds jobs.
[00:22:13]  He lives in public housing.
[00:22:15]  And my third question is, how that a president could call Georgia, people forget, they asked the commissioner of the election to ask them for 10,000 votes.
[00:22:28]  People forgot about that.
[00:22:29]  How you could do that?
[00:22:31]  Okay.
[00:22:31]  Nick Traiano.
[00:22:33]  Well, there are many ideas of how to make our democracy more representative of voters, including the idea the gentleman mentioned around reforming our electoral college.
[00:22:43]  The challenge is that some of those ideas run through Congress needing to pass federal legislation or in the case of the Electoral College, an actual constitutional amendment that would need to be done.
[00:22:55]  And those are higher thresholds of viability.
[00:22:59]  The advantage of focusing, as United America does, on primary reform is that it doesn't require an act of Congress or a constitutional amendment.
[00:23:08]  These are laws that can be changed at the state level.
[00:23:12]  And by the way, when we succeed in opening primaries to all voters in all states, we will have a more representative Congress that can take on other issues and other important reforms that also need to be done.
[00:23:24]  So I think the question is just where is the most impactful and viable reforms to focus on now and opening party primaries or abolishing party primaries altogether is what sits at that nexus and is why that is the focus of our organization.
[00:23:39]  Patrick is watching in Connecticut on our line for Republicans.
[00:23:42]  Morning.
[00:23:45]  Hey, Patrick, you got to mute your television, all right?
[00:23:48]  Oh, yeah.
[00:23:49]  Okay, I'm sorry.
[00:23:49]  Go ahead.
[00:23:50]  All right.
[00:23:50]  Go ahead with your question or comment.
[00:23:52]  Yes, on the elections and stuff like that, I think that the president should not have anything to do with that.
[00:23:59]  That should be Congress, basically.
[00:24:01]  Congress sets all the rules and stuff.
[00:24:03]  So I think basically the Congress should take and do it themselves.
[00:24:09]  And that's my comment.
[00:24:12]  And because I vote and I just go to the polls all the time, but the president should not have the power of that.
[00:24:19]  I mean, he has enough power as it is.
[00:24:21]  Okay, Patrick.
[00:24:23]  Let me go to Lewis, who's in Salisbury, North Carolina, Democratic caller.
[00:24:26]  Lewis, it's your turn.
[00:24:28]  Hey, top of the morning to you.
[00:24:30]  Hey, look, I remember that birthright citizen thing.
[00:24:36]  I just want to comment on that.
[00:24:39]  That's a carrot with a stick.
[00:24:42]  They're not talking about, they're trying to tell you that it's about people from foreign countries coming in and have babies and leave.
[00:24:48]  Who would want to have a baby here at this time who's the president now?
[00:24:51]  It's very embarrassing.
[00:24:54]  But it's really all about African slaves at that particular time.
[00:24:57]  They're just trying to get there on a sneaky tip.
[00:25:00]  But in North Carolina, you're talking about absentee ballots are the best.
[00:25:05]  Now, you just can't get an application or a ballot and think you're going to send it in just like that.
[00:25:12]  No way, baby.
[00:25:13]  You got to have two witnesses' signatures with it on your ballot.
[00:25:17]  Plus, you got to send in a copy ID with your ballot.
[00:25:20]  You just, it's ridiculous what they're trying to say how absentee ballots.
[00:25:24]  If you remember in the last election, when we gathered together, I'm talking about African Americans to vote.
[00:25:30]  Guess what the white supremacists would do?
[00:25:31]  They will call a bomb threat to mess that precinct up.
[00:25:35]  I'm telling all my African-American brothers and sisters, go ahead and do your absentee ballot and let them do the bomb threats to the white precincts and see what happens there.
[00:25:44]  But no, this is all crazy.
[00:25:47]  All right, we'll leave it there.
[00:25:48]  Barbara in California, Democratic caller.
[00:25:51]  I just have a question that nobody's addressing about voting.
[00:25:55]  Trump's a convicted felon.
[00:25:57]  How did he even get to vote in the Florida race?
[00:26:01]  People, wake the hell up.
[00:26:03]  We are losing our country.
[00:26:05]  Come on now.
[00:26:07]  All right, a couple calls on that.
[00:26:09]  Nick Traiano.
[00:26:11]  Yeah, I can't answer the prior caller's question, but what I can say is that our right to vote is precious in this country.
[00:26:18]  And there are 17 million Americans right now that literally cannot cast a ballot in taxpayer-funded primaries because they're not affiliated with either political party.
[00:26:28]  And when you look at who those voters are, they're disproportionately young people.
[00:26:32]  They're disproportionately veterans.
[00:26:34]  And so our current system is basically telling voters who are the future of the country and those that have fought for our country that they don't have a say in our elections.
[00:26:43]  And I think that's deeply wrong and is one of the problems that we are working to fix.
[00:26:48]  Guillermo's next.
[00:26:48]  He's in Philadelphia, Republican caller.
[00:26:52]  Two morning she spent.
[00:26:54]  Morning, mute your television, all right?
[00:26:58]  Go ahead with your question or comment.
[00:27:00]  Yeah, Mike, I'd like to address Nick.
[00:27:05]  Nick, you say there's only a few non-citizen voters.
[00:27:12]  So why not remove them?
[00:27:14]  It's simple as that.
[00:27:16]  Remove those people from the voting ballot.

=== New Burdens on Voters (06:28) ===

[00:27:20]  The first point of the Save America Act is, you got to have a id.
[00:27:27]  You do have an id, as you have heard, to send when you are voting from uh mailing ballot, so why not present the id?
[00:27:41]  When you were confronted with this question, you went into all this theory about why parties do this and white parties do that.
[00:27:51]  This is not a party thing.
[00:27:53]  This is an American system of voting.
[00:27:56]  Okay.
[00:27:57]  The party didn't start that.
[00:27:58]  The founding fathers started that.
[00:28:01]  The elections.
[00:28:03]  Okay.
[00:28:03]  Well, sir, with all due respect, I have a better voice than you do when it comes to the common folk.
[00:28:10]  The people like me, Joe down from the street, who is an air conditioning man.
[00:28:17]  You represent other people that really don't know what you are talking about.
[00:28:23]  You want to present your side, and that's good, but it's not, it's mute.
[00:28:30]  Your side is mute.
[00:28:32]  You do need an ID to go anywhere in the world.
[00:28:36]  You say that you have a few voting ballots that come in with non-citizens that's removed.
[00:28:43]  Okay, let's take your point.
[00:28:44]  Nick?
[00:28:45]  Look, I mean, I don't disagree with the caller.
[00:28:49]  I think having voter identification is an important part of having a secure election system.
[00:28:55]  It's also an issue, to the caller's point, that a vast majority of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents support.
[00:29:02]  But I think we need to be really careful about some provisions of what we see in the Save America Act, particularly with new burdens on proving citizenship at the point of registration.
[00:29:13]  I was listening to the floor debate in the Senate, for example, where Senator Murkowski was describing what that would mean in practical terms for voters in rural Alaska having to incur upwards of $1,000 of costs to physically show up to their local elections division if they can find the paperwork they need to prove it.
[00:29:31]  And these are people who've been in our country and citizens and voting for decades.
[00:29:35]  So I think we need to distinguish between what is common sense election law that is already the case in most states that other states should follow suit in adopting versus what is essentially a partisan messaging bill that gets to the core dysfunction of our politics today,
[00:29:53]  which is when our leaders are focused on trying to deliver sort of red meat issues to the base of their party rather than working in a common sense way on issues that I think most Americans want them focused on.
[00:30:08]  And again, I would underscore the challenge of passing any election law in a totally partisan way, because I think rightly the other half of the country will view that with some skepticism as to what is the motivation behind it.
[00:30:23]  Is it really about securing our elections or is it about trying to establish some partisan advantage in the next election?
[00:30:32]  So that's my view.
[00:30:33]  Don't don't dispute it on the merits of having secure elections and voter identification.
[00:30:38]  I'm skeptical around some of the motivations behind the bill and what the impact would be of new burdens on voters that deserve easy access to cast their ballot.
[00:30:50]  Nick, you said that United America is working with states that are trying to stop open primaries.
[00:30:55]  What are those states and what is the effort like?
[00:31:00]  Well, one example is in Louisiana.
[00:31:03]  It's one of the few states that did not have traditional party primaries for half a century until the new governor came in and decided that he wanted to implement closed party primaries, which would actually cost the state upwards of $100 million over the next several election cycles to implement because it would require putting a primary where there used to be none.
[00:31:26]  It's extra cost of election administration, for example, and voters don't like it.
[00:31:30]  We just did a poll in Louisiana that showed 80% of voters prefer the open primary system.
[00:31:36]  The motivation behind it was one of party purity, including retribution against one of the state's senators that has shown independence in the way that he's voted.
[00:31:48]  And so I think there will be a backlash.
[00:31:50]  I think that bill will eventually be repealed as it once was a decade ago when they tried doing a similar thing.
[00:31:56]  It's a problem when parties try to take over our elections that truly should belong to the people.
[00:32:03]  And I think voters will hold politicians accountable who try to usurp that power for themselves.
[00:32:09]  Jeff is next in Kansas City, Missouri, Democratic Caller.
[00:32:13]  Yes, we are one of the smartest countries in the world.
[00:32:18]  Why are we still using third war voting systems?
[00:32:25]  The only fraud that I see is coming from the Republican Party, and they should be ashamed.
[00:32:31]  And millions of Republicans will also be affected by these laws that they're trying to come up with.
[00:32:39]  Unless we come up with, unless the Republicans come up with a different way, a different standard for like these counties and all this stuff to allow them to vote.
[00:32:50]  It is fraud.
[00:32:51]  And Republicans shouldn't be ashamed of trying to destroy this country.
[00:32:56]  That's all I got.
[00:32:56]  All right.
[00:32:57]  Mr. Tarano, what do you say?
[00:32:59]  Well, I'll seize on the first comment that the caller made about America being the smartest country in the world.
[00:33:04]  I was reminded of that yesterday, you know, with the launch of Artemis II.
[00:33:09]  It's amazing to be reminded of what our country is capable of when we work together.
[00:33:13]  We're propelling humans further into space than has ever been done before in history as we work to get back to the moon and eventually to Mars.
[00:33:21]  And then contrast that with what we see back here on planet Earth with a Congress that has politicians who are seemingly incapable of even working together to fund our Department of Homeland Security, which has impacted millions of travelers stuck on long lines, over 50,000 government workers who've gone six weeks without paychecks.
[00:33:39]  This is happening because the incentive structure of our system is broken.
[00:33:44]  You know, the good news is that it doesn't take rocket science to fix it.

=== Fixing Incentive Structures (03:57) ===

[00:33:48]  You know, these are changes that could be made at the state level in terms of opening our primaries to all voters, ensuring that candidates who win a majority of votes get elected.
[00:33:59]  We can rise to be a great country as we've seen ourselves advance in every other way.
[00:34:05]  We can do so in the way that we govern ourselves and hold our elections as well.
[00:34:09]  Round Lake, Illinois.
[00:34:11]  Ron, good morning to you on our line for Republicans.
[00:34:14]  Yeah, how you doing?
[00:34:16]  Yeah, I guess you're talking about political primaries.
[00:34:20]  I mean, reform, hasn't the Democratic Party basically set a precedent on political primaries meaning nothing when you ran eight candidates for the biggest office in the world, the president of the United States, that received no, not one vote in the primary?
[00:34:40]  I guess, what's the answer to that?
[00:34:42]  They've already set a precedent.
[00:34:43]  They've already reformed themselves.
[00:34:45]  They don't care what the American people voted for.
[00:34:48]  They did whatever they wanted.
[00:34:51]  Nick Torano.
[00:34:52]  I think the caller is right to point that out.
[00:34:54]  In 2024, the Democratic Party sought to close their primary election process, canceling elections, including in the state of Florida, for example, where there were multiple candidates running in an attempt to sort of coronate former President Biden.
[00:35:11]  And I don't think that worked out so well for them.
[00:35:14]  Similarly, you know, in 2016, the Republicans ran a primary for president in which President Trump was nominated with fewer than half the votes of primary voters in that election.
[00:35:26]  And so when we don't give a majority of voters the freedom to vote for whomever they want in these primaries, the parties wind up nominating candidates who are outside of the mainstream views of most Americans.
[00:35:39]  And so we've seen how the system is broken.
[00:35:44]  I'm hopeful that over the next few years, we can realize the potential of what it means to fix it in terms of leaders who are more representative of more Americans and have greater incentive to work together on the issues that matter.
[00:35:57]  Nick Torano, let's wrap with which states are trying to open up their primaries.
[00:36:03]  Talk about Unite America's work there and where can people learn more.
[00:36:07]  Well, Unite America is based in Denver, Colorado.
[00:36:11]  It's actually a state where just yesterday, a federal court struck down a portion of a semi-open primary law that was adopted by voters in 2016, which has the potential to return us to a place where independent voters no longer have the right to participate in both parties' primaries.
[00:36:31]  And so we are working in Colorado, including with a wonderful partner organization called Courageous Colorado, to lay the groundwork for a future potential initiative that would give every voter the right to vote for whomever they want in every election.
[00:36:45]  And so Colorado is just one of the states where I think in the next few years, we will see a push to fully open our primaries to all voters.
[00:36:53]  And the potential is that even short of winning this type of reform in all 50 states, if just 10 states were to abolish traditional party primaries, it would mean that we'd have 20 U.S. senators from those states, close to 100 members of Congress total, that would no longer be beholden to the fringes of the far left or far right, but would actually be able to represent the broad majority of voters across the political spectrum.
[00:37:20]  And so as every state adopts these reforms, it's not just the states that will be improved.
[00:37:24]  It's our Congress and country as a whole.
[00:37:27]  The website is uniteamerica.org.
[00:37:30]  Nick Triano is the executive director of the Unite America.
[00:37:35]  He's also the author of the book, The Primary Solution, Rescuing Our Democracy from the Fringes.
[00:37:41]  Thank you for the conversation this morning.
[00:37:43]  Thank you.

=== No Commentary Just Facts (01:12) ===

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