Are Primary Elections A Waste Of Time In Minnesota?

Let me start this by saying that I am Thankful for the right to vote. My father and so many other veterans fought for us to have the freedom’s we have and casting my vote is not something I take for granted nor do I take lightly. Our system isn’t perfect, but it’s better than most everywhere else in the world.  

This is a Presidential election year; Tuesday March 5th is the Primary date for Minnesota as well as 15 other states. This is the day each party in these states will decide who will represent them in the November election.  

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Primaries are a long-standing tradition, but I want to ask the question, do we really need them?  

Now with the technology that we have, social media and 24-hour news channel access, it just seems things are decided well before the actual primary dates for most states with two candidates standing out from everyone else. Most of the candidates on the republican side of things never made it to the Super Tuesday primary which Minnesota participates in. 

I remember there being elections in the past where there were a couple of candidates in a primary that would have a realistic chance to be nominated. 

I reached out to the Minnesota Secretary of State’s office asking some questions. The first of which, how much money does a primary election cost the state?  

The Presidential Nominating Primary is the only election that the state provides funding for, all other elections are funded locally. In 2023, the state of Minnesota estimated that the Presidential Nominating Primary would cost $15,251,980. $15,180,980 in reimbursable local costs, and an estimated $62,000 in reimbursable state costs.  

You may have heard about the candidate who is on the Minnesota Primary ballot who doesn’t want you to vote for her, because she had no idea that her name had been added to the ballot here. She is a marijuana advocate who had her name added by an organization who supports the legalization of marijuana. Here’s a link to that article.  

According to the Minnesota’s Secretary of States office, the state only uses paper ballots, and they are available to voters 46 days prior to every election for; by mail voting or in-person voting, so there's the expense of printing the ballots each year as well. 

Another reason I ask the question do we still need primary elections is because the turnout always seems to be low. The Secretary of State’s office provided me a link to historical data of election turnouts, and the highest primary turnout since 1950 was 39.24% in 1966.  

In the Presidential Primary in 2016, the percentage was 7.42%, and in 2020 was 22.25%. And I think these numbers represent what I mentioned earlier that now with social media and technology we pretty much already know who’s going to be on the ballot in November.  

The lowest percentage of registered voters for a November General Election was in 1986 with 48.17%. The last two Presidential Election have yielded better than 70%. In 2016, 74.72% and in 2020 a whopping 79.96% turned out to vote.  

I know many people, despite two candidates standing out from others, who wish we had more candidates to choose from. I guess you could say that’s what the primaries are for, but it just seems that process is contaminated to the wishes of each party. 
The State’s Secretary of States Website even says that only major party candidates will appear on the primary ballot. Of course, we always have the option to “write-in” someone, but the state of Minnesota says in some offices, that person must file a request to have any votes for them counted.  

I would much prefer that candidates file to run for President in March and campaign until the November election. Let as many candidates as possible who meet the criteria appear on the ballot, so we have one than 2 or 3 choices. If we have 8 or 9, what’s wrong with that? 

What that means though is that the parties won’t be calling the shots. Candidates will have to stand on their own platforms, raise their own money, and talk about their plans instead of telling us why their opposition is such a bad choice. And we could never have that happen, could we? 

I just don’t believe that because we’ve always done something, that’s a good enough reason to keep doing it. But the train of money that is pushing the tradition of primaries is too strong and there’s too much money to be made along the way I suppose.  

I also understand there are local and state election primaries too, but the data of low turnouts I presented above represents those too. 

I just feel that the way we’re doing things now has gotten so far off base from the way it was designed all those years ago, that maybe making a change in the process that would better benefit most of the population instead of best suiting the parties and money machines behind them.