When Primaries Break Government, Voters Pay the Price

Even if our elected leaders can't agree on the important issues of the day, most Americans expect they can do the bare minimum: keep the lights on. Yet too often, Washington fails at even this most basic responsibility. The reason runs deeper than partisan bickering or personality clashes.

The real culprit is closed party primaries—a system that empowers a narrow band of hyper-partisan voters to elect over 90% of Congress. By rewarding ideological grandstanding to court primary voters over pragmatic problem-solving, closed primaries help produce a Congress that is more polarized, less productive, and more likely to stumble into crises that hurt the very people it’s supposed to serve.

One of the clearest examples of this dynamic? Government shutdowns like the one we’re experiencing right now. A shutdown isn’t just an accident of bad timing; it’s a symptom of a political system designed to serve parties, not people.

How Voters Feel the Pain

Government shutdowns don’t just stall politics in Washington—they disrupt the lives of millions of everyday Americans.

With government funding now lapsed, federal agencies have begun scaling back operations, and major disruptions are already rippling across the country:

• Pay for active-duty military and hundreds of thousands of federal employees is delayed until funding is restored. Many are still required to work — but without paychecks until after the shutdown ends.
  
  
• Food assistance for low-income families can be disrupted if a shutdown drags on, putting millions of households at risk of missing vital benefits.
  
  
• Across the federal government, projections suggest up to 900,000 employees could be furloughed, while another 700,000 may be forced to work without pay until the shutdown ends.
  
  
• Small businesses that rely on federal contracts are especially vulnerable. During the 2018–2019 shutdown, nearly $13 billion in contracts were disrupted each week, leaving many small firms struggling to make payroll or shutting their doors entirely.
  
  
• The FDA has warned that some food safety inspections could be put on hold. Without regular oversight, contaminated products could slip through the cracks — raising the risk that people actually get sick.

We don’t have to imagine the fallout—it has happened before. During the 2018–2019 shutdown, the longest in U.S. history, 800,000 federal workers missed two paychecks, with some turning to food banks to feed their families. National parks closed, airports faced security shortages, and the economy lost billions of dollars in activity. The consequences were felt most acutely by everyday Americans, not the Congress members who were standing in the way of compromise.

Why Shutdowns Can Be Politically Rewarding

Given the widespread harm, why would legislators allow—or even welcome—a shutdown? The answer lies in the distorted incentives created by party primaries.

In many states, only registered party members can vote in their party’s primary. This contributes to low turnout—sometimes as little as 10% of eligible voters—and an overrepresentation of the most ideological partisans. 

For members of Congress, this creates a simple political calculus that favors chaos over compromise:

• The real threat is not losing the general election, but being “primaried.”
• Voting for compromise—even to keep the government running—can spark a backlash from well-organized partisan activists.
• Taking a hardline stance, by contrast, wins points with the narrow base of voters who actually decide primary outcomes.

In other words, legislators face stronger incentives to grandstand and obstruct than to govern responsibly. A shutdown becomes less about serving constituents and more about surviving the next primary.

A Better Way Forward

Shutdowns may feel inevitable, but they’re not. They are symptoms of a political system that rewards appealing to a narrow few and punishes working for the broader public good.

Reforming the primary system offers a path toward healthier incentives. Open, all-candidate primaries, in which every voter can participate regardless of party, shift power back to the broader electorate. Instead of appealing only to the most ideological sliver of voters, candidates must earn support from a majority. That creates room for pragmatism, problem-solving, and coalition-building—the very qualities needed to avoid crises like shutdowns.

One powerful example came during the 2023 standoff over the federal debt ceiling. Facing the threat of a catastrophic default, Republican representatives from states with open, all-candidate primaries—California, Washington, Alaska, and Louisiana—overwhelmingly supported the deal, with about 95 percent voting to suspend the debt limit. In contrast, only 65 percent of Republicans from states with closed or partisan primaries backed the measure, underscoring how election rules can shape incentives to govern responsibly.

Open primaries won’t guarantee Congress never stumbles into dysfunction. But they would make it far less rewarding for politicians to flirt with chaos. The result? A system where legislators answer to more voters, not fewer—and where the costs of dysfunction are borne by politicians, not by the public.

Conclusion

Government shutdowns highlight the stark divide between what voters want and what our political system delivers. While most Americans crave stability and competence, closed party primaries empower the most unrepresentative voices, incentivize polarization, and leave millions of voters and their families to suffer the consequences.

Until we fix this structural flaw, shutdowns will remain a recurring feature of American politics. And each time Congress grinds to a halt, it won’t be the politicians who pay the price. It will be the voters.

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