The movie “Spotlight” showed how The Boston Globe uncovered and published the sex-abuse scandal in the Catholic church. The Spotlight team of investigative reporters, having found six priests who had abused children and been covered up by the church, wanted to publish then, but their editor said no. If you report it now, nothing will change. Those priests will be exposed, it will be quickly forgotten, and it will go back to business as usual. The problem is systemic. You need to go after the source. Ultimately, the team uncovered 87 priests for whom the church had paid settlements and who were reassigned but free to continue abusing children.

This morning’s news reported that the Democratic Party has voted to move the dates of the first primaries to states other than New Hampshire in an attempt to get better outcomes.

What have these stories to do with each other? The underlying problem with our elections is systemic.

The Constitution gives the state legislatures authority to choose the candidates they want to run for president and vice-president. The state legislatures have delegated that responsibility to political parties at the expense of the people, whose right it is.

They do this by printing separate ballots for political parties, thus shutting out participation by the thoughtful, independent-minded voters who do not belong to political parties. Even in those states like Massachusetts that allow unenrolled (independent) voters to choose which ballot they want to vote on, they are denied the right to split their vote (vote for some on one party, some on another party).

As it was explained to election workers at a training session I attended, if you write in the name of someone on a ballot who belongs to another party, that vote is effectively thrown away. For example, if you chose the Democrat ballot on the last primary and wrote in Charlie Baker for governor, that would be one vote for Charlie Baker as a Democrat, not added to the Republican total.

This problem is systemic. The system is set up to give the political parties, not the people, the power to effectively decide who the candidates will be on the final ballot, in which all the people who were denied to right to vote in the primary (in many states, you cannot vote in the primary unless you belong to a political party) can finally select from the candidates they had no voice in choosing.

I believe that the effect is to promote extreme candidates, who appeal to their partisan compatriots, but who would be unacceptable to the majority of the general population. Thus I end up having to choose the lesser of two evils. And, without ranked-choice voting, to choose another (third party) candidate is effectively to throw away your vote.

I was very encouraged when I heard that Alaska, in their last primary election, had one ballot, and the candidates were chosen by ranked choice. I look forward to the day when this will be the rule rather than the exception. But even ranked-choice counting is not enough if there are separate ballots, and voting in primary elections is restricted to party members.

The problem is systemic, and the system must be changed to take back for the people their right to choose a candidate in each state who has the support of the majority. The political parties should have no more influence on elections than any other interest group — the NRA or ACLU, etc. 

Judith Truesdell lives in Shelburne. 

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