A national campaign to lessen polarization pushes states to ditch partisan primaries

A national campaign is backing ballot measures in six states to end partisan primaries. The current system gives the most active members of both major parties an outsize role in picking political leaders. The $70 million effort to replace traditional primaries with either nonpartisan ones or ranked choice voting is run by Denver-based Unite America. Some skeptics contend that changing the structure of primaries won’t make much of a difference in polarization given how so much of the country lives in either heavily Democratic or heavily Republican communities.