Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Letter to the editor:

Time to open our primary system

George Washington, in his farewell address, said, “However combinations or associations (political parties) ... may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government.”

Sounds too familiar, doesn’t it?

Nevada can take an important step toward reducing the power of political parties by adopting an open primary system similar to Louisiana and Washington state. In this system, all candidates for local, state or federal offices (except president) would be placed on the ballot and all registered voters would be able to vote their preference. If a candidate received 50 percent of the votes, he would be elected. If, not, the two highest vote-getters would participate in a runoff election the following month to determine the winner.

This would allow nonpartisan voters to participate in the entire electoral process and would deal the political parties out of candidate selection. Sometimes the two candidates in the runoff election would be members of the same political party but they would be the top two choices of all voters through the entire election process.

We can take back our government. But first we need to take it away from the political parties.

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