The primary season in this midterm election year is over. In most states and predictably

turnout was low, often below 20% of registered voters, while the partisan divide was as wide as ever.

On the Republican side, most Trump and Doris candidates beat challenges and even incumbents

who did not gain the support of the former president. The results were more mixed for Democrats,

but in most states a very large number of voters, registered independents, all those who don't

identify with either major party, were shut out of the primary process. Their voice has not even been heard.

You're listening to a special episode of Let's Find Common Ground. I'm Ashley Melntite.

And I'm Richard Davies. We look at primaries as a way of picking candidates who compete for votes

in November's general election that will decide whether Democrats keep control

of both houses of Congress. We examine problems with the primaries and ask, is there a better way

to pick candidates for public office? We'll hear from multiple guests we spoken with on our

podcast and at public events organized by Common Ground Committee. Let's start off with

constitutional law scholar Rick Pilders, who says that for most of its history, America didn't even

have primaries, but then along came the 1960s and sweeping changes brought about by the movements

for civil rights and women's rights plus demands to end the war in Vietnam.

In all this tumult, the old way of picking presidential candidates was swept away.

One of the most radical changes we made to our political process in the last 50-60 years

was the change from the convention-based system for choosing nominees

to the system we created in the 1970s, which basically is these primary elections

choose the delegates to the conventions and whoever gets the majority of the delegates

and the primaries gets the nomination. That has huge ramifications for the kinds of candidates

who run for president and the kinds of candidates who are capable of winning the nomination.

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