Does Montana need to overhaul its Primary Election system?

Former Montana Governor Marc Racicot and former Secretary of State Bob Brown, both Republicans, are considering moving the state toward nonpartisan primary elections. They said it would allow candidates regardless of their political leanings to be on all primary ballots and hopefully weed out extremists and serve a larger majority of voters. They said this is a system that would allow candidates who have not been groomed by a party alone "to move to the great middle."

Brown said the nonpartisan primary allows candidates from all parties on the same ballot, and the top two vote-getters would move on to the general election.

Racicot is also pushing for campaign finance reform. He sees it as "out of hand" and calling the millions spent to get into political office "obscene."

Is this a good idea?  We have two dedicated Republicans trying to improve on an election system that just swept nearly every Montana Republican candidate into office in the last election. Why would they want to improve on that?

I'm curious what the Montana Democrats think of this idea.

If we were all to become painfully honest with ourselves, we would admit that our election process has become a little ruthless. There is way too much mega-money spent in buying elections, there is way too much dishonesty in campaigning, and there is way too much campaign influence coming from outside our state.

While I applaud these two men for offering solutions to our election process, I truly believe we could solve the entire problem by eliminating the ability for American oligarchs to buy elections and introduce huge penalties to candidates who are fact-checked and caught emitting false information to hurt their opponent and/or to enhance their own campaign chances.

The proposed changes might be an excellent way to allow people of every stripe to join our primary election process regardless of a party affiliation. They may also be an utopian exercise in futility.

However, wouldn't it be great if we could reach a point where candidates were elected based on the content of their character and not the color of their money or party! 

What thoughts do you have about the Racicot/Brown ideas?

An honest opinion by

John Watson