Opinion: Utah’s primary election results raise questions about caucus-convention system

The initial primary election results point to the likely conclusion that Republican primary voters want the opposite of what they got from their party convention in the highest-profile races — and by significant margins. This raises important questions about how we use taxpayer dollars to nominate candidates for office. The state GOP leadership’s new push for candidates to sign a pledge to support the caucus-convention system magnifies the issue.

We need a principled framework to answer such questions. The framers of the U.S. Constitution offer such a framework: 1) Limit the power of factions, and 2) Use a broad base of voters to check factional interests. This framework can help us recognize both what we need the caucus-convention system to do, and what we must do if that system fails to satisfy these requirements.

The purpose of a primary election is for a political party to decide who will represent it as a candidate for office in the November general election. But this immediately raises a question: What — and who — is the party?

Some — such as party leaders and many party delegates — may argue that they are the party. According to this argument, the party convention outcome is or ought to be the determining factor, and when the primary election result is contrary to the convention outcome, the party is weakened. In this view, a party pledge to support the caucus-convention system is a reasonable attempt to protect the party.

On the other hand, some may argue that the voting members of the party are the party. According to this argument, primary election results should decide nominees. Primary election results that regularly contradict convention outcomes are a sign that party leaders are not properly representing the party.

What you think about the caucus-convention system after the 2024 primary elections is significantly influenced by your answer to the question of what or who is the party, and it is easy to answer by simply looking at how your preferred candidate performed at the convention versus in the primary election.

But “whether my candidate wins” is a poor lens for deciding how we use tax dollars to nominate candidates for the general election. We should instead turn to sound policy principles. We have those in the words of the framers of the U.S. Constitution.

There were no primary elections in the time of the framers. However, they did document ideas relevant to elections in The Federalist Papers.

The authors of The Federalist Papers (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay) voiced some of their strongest political concerns about what they called “faction.” Today, we might call it tribalism or interest group politics — where a group places its short-term political interest above the community or nation as a whole.

Hamilton in Federalist No. 81 worries about the “pestilential breath of faction” poisoning the “fountains of justice.” Madison in Federalist No. 39 and Federalist No. 40 shares his concern about the potential power of a “handful of tyrannical nobles” and the “absurdity of subjecting” the fate of America to the “perverseness or corruption” of a small fraction of the country.

In the minds of the framers, part of the solution to faction was the people themselves voting in broadly based elections. As Hamilton argues in Federalist No. 35, the requirement of candidates for office to obtain and maintain their “public honors” through regular elections will force candidates to be attentive to voters’ “dispositions and inclinations.”

When elections allow a broad and diverse enough group of people to vote, it forces candidates to represent a broad mix of those interests. This limits the influence of factions.

The caucus-convention system, when it functions as designed, forwards these constitutional principles by nominating delegates that represent the broad and diverse interests of party voters in how they vote at convention. Our primary election results suggest that is not happening.

When the caucus-convention system becomes dysfunctional, it empowers factions of voters to nominate their preferred candidates against the desire of the broad base of party voters. That undermines the constitutional framework around factions and elections laid out in The Federalist Papers.

Whatever anyone may think about Utah’s caucus-convention system, they must grapple with the reality of our primary election results and what they suggest about the caucus-convention system as it currently operates. If the caucus-convention system cannot be made to promote the constitutional principles regarding factions and elections laid out by the framers, then civic devotion to the Constitution and accountability to taxpayers demands that we seek out a better way to nominate candidates for public office.

Derek Monson is the chief growth officer at Sutherland Institute, a nonpartisan public policy think tank whose mission is to advance principled public policy and promote the Constitutional values of faith, family and freedom.