Worried and losing hope about the future of our country?  Polls say that fully 84% of Americans now think our politics are badly broken by extreme political polarization.  It’s hard to not feel discouraged and powerless; resolving those differences seems like a lost cause.  But there is actually a structural problem at the root of this dysfunction—— and it CAN be fixed.

The Real Problem

Small numbers of primary voters with extreme, uncompromising views, both far right and far left, now actually decide who gets elected to Congress.  Primary voters, NOT general election voters.  Gerrymandering has shifted ultimate electoral power to low-turnout primaries dominated by the most ideologically extreme voters.  Our Congress is not representative of the mainstream today.

This new reality directly creates our national political dysfunction.   Congress is paralyzed by hyper-partisanship, unable to do much of anything no matter how urgent.  Even worse, the “primaried out” tactic has gutted Congress’s ability to check Executive branch over-reach and protect our democracy.

The Fix

There is a straightforward fix:  get more moderates to vote in Congressional primaries to dilute the unrepresentative extremes.    But how?

This is an information problem.  People who vote regularly in general elections don’t vote in primaries, research says, because they don’t think primaries matter.  Understanding that primaries matter CRITICALLY now would prompt more of these committed voters to turn out for primaries too.

Purple Primaries is a public information campaign to promote this understanding and create community for centrists.  Primary turnout is so small that we only need to convince a small portion of worried moderates to succeed.  Join us to spread the completely non-partisan Purple Primaries message:  Vote in PRIMARIES to Fix Our Broken Politics.