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The Abstract
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> By Stephanie DiCapua Getman, Arnold Ventures
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AV’s Executive Vice President of Communications and External Affairs Sam Mar writes this week about Tuesday’s election and the power of open primaries:
For a time, Apple’s slogan was “Think Different.” You remember the ad, “Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes…” That spirit of thinking differently, of being unafraid to swim against the tide, has been a hallmark of the American experiment. This is a country built on bold ideas and leaders who were unwilling to lay down to the establishment. We are a country of nonconformists, of contrarians, and to this day we instill in our children the value of independent thinking. No parent wants their kid to grow up to be a lemming.
And yet, when it comes to our politics, most states have a system that is not only designed to incentivize conformity, it demands it. Traditional partisan primaries — especially those that ban independents from voting — punish the independent thinking that we so often lift up in other arenas. Instead, closed primaries reward orthodoxy, blind loyalty, and pandering to the base, who often prefer bomb-throwing warriors over consensus-builders. This is known as the “primary problem.”
Open primaries, on the other hand, reward independence, dissent, and principled action. They encourage elected officials to act with courage and cater to their entire constituency, not just party leaders or cable news networks.
Recent primary elections bore this out. In Michigan, South Carolina, and Wyoming, voters chose their candidates in traditional partisan primaries. Republican Reps. Peter Meijer, Tom Rice, and Liz Cheney, who all followed their conscience and voted to impeach former President Donald Trump, lost their races to Trump-backed challengers.
A different outcome developed in Washington and California, which employ open “top two” primaries, and in Alaska, which employs an open “top four” primary. These states allow all voters, regardless of party, to determine which candidates advance from the primary to the general election. In those three states, Republican Reps. Dan Newhouse, David Valadao, and Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who all voted for impeachment, are progressing to the November general election.
To be sure, each candidate’s primary had a unique dynamic. But the results may well have come down to the significant differences in their primary systems.
Incentives matter. Open primaries change more than who votes and wins — they change how winners govern. By design, open primaries encourage candidates to speak to the broadest spectrum of voters – not just the sliver that happens to vote in one party’s primary — and to emphasize issues of greatest concern in the district or state.
The open primary also allowed these candidates to buck party orthodoxy — and not only with their impeachment vote. Newhouse and Valadao have both championed thoughtful bipartisan immigration reform. Murkowski is legendary in her independence from her party’s policy agenda on everything from climate change to Supreme Court nominations. It makes sense. Elections that include all voters produce winners who care about all voters, and govern accordingly.
Politicians elected under closed primary systems, in contrast, have no incentive to be independent, because they have no constituency of independent or unaffiliated voters and no need to court their votes. Instead, they are punished and sent home when they try to exercise an original thought. And we wonder why the approval rating for Congress sits at 17%.
Partisan primaries make even less sense when fewer and fewer Americans identify with a political party. By Gallup’s estimates, a plurality of voters nationwide — 41% — identify as independents, far outpacing the 28% and 29% who identify as Republicans and Democrats, respectively. In 15 states, more than 20 million independents are barred from voting in primaries, despite the fact that these are publicly administered elections that all taxpayers pay for. Think about that. If you are an independent voter in one of those states, you are paying for a primary election that you are banned from participating in that will likely determine who represents you in Congress. Modern-day taxation without representation.
We all want leaders who put the best interest of our country before that of a political party. Tuesday’s results demonstrate that opening our primaries can reinforce our ideals — and move candidates to defend them. During this challenging period in our democracy’s history, open primaries offer a way forward. While not a silver bullet, they are an important step toward repairing what ails our political system and allowing our elected officials to take courageous votes when their conscience demands it.
— Sam Mar,
Executive Vice President of Communications and External Affairs
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Evidence and Patients for the Win
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By Juliana Keeping, communications manager
President Biden this week signed the Inflation Reduction Act, which includes important provisions to lower drug prices. In a joint statement, AV Co-Founders and Co-Chairs Laura and John Arnold thanked leaders and advocates who worked relentlessly to secure the new law.
What's Happening: For nearly 20 years, Medicare was barred from negotiating the price it pays for prescription drugs. The new law means Medicare will eventually negotiate the cost of up to 20 drugs facing no competition after years of market access. The reforms in the IRA will cap out-of-pocket costs for seniors in Medicare Part D at $2,000 per year, bringing immediate relief at the pharmacy counter. The law will also require that drug manufacturers pay a penalty to the federal government if their prices in the Medicare program increase faster than inflation, which would help slow list price growth over time.
Why it Matters: These drug pricing reforms are critical: Nearly a third of Americans say it is difficult to afford their medicines, forcing people to ration. Large percentages of voters from both political parties have expressed concerns about drug affordability — a January 2021 Morning Consult poll found 96% of voters said lower drug pricing was a top priority for Americans. And 76% of Americans nationwide support allowing Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices.
What's Next: “As the job turns to implementing this incredible achievement, we look forward to building additional momentum around future efforts to lower costs," the Arnolds said.
Read our statement >
Related: 3 Ways the New Law Will Help People
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Polling: Broad Bipartisan
Support for Prison Reform
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By Evan Mintz, director of communications
A new poll by Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM) finds that a broad bipartisan coalition wants independent oversight of the nation's prison systems — and also supports criminal justice reform.
What's Happening: In a first-ever national poll on the topic, FAMM found an overwhelming 82% of respondents believe “that states and the federal government should have a system of independent oversight for their prisons” — including 80% of Republicans, 79% of independents, and 85% of Democrats.
The poll also found that 75% of respondents support reforming the nation’s criminal justice system — including 66% of Republicans, 66% of independents, and 84% of Democrats.
Why it Matters: Prisons remain opaque and understudied, allowing inhumane conditions to persist behind bars.
“This first-of-its kind polling shows that Americans are united in their desire to ensure that problems affecting safety, health, and general conditions in prisons come to light and are addressed,” said Julie James, Arnold Ventures vice president of criminal justice for corrections. “Prisons remain out of public view, allowing inhumane conditions to thrive, harming everyone involved — including those working in facilities and those incarcerated in them.”
What's Next: FAMM is specifically calling on every state to enact prisons oversight by an independent body that has authority to monitor and inspect facilities, address prisoner grievances, and provide recommendations for improving correctional departments.
Read the story > |
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'I've Walked This Road Before'
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By Evan Mintz, director of communications
Advancing Pretrial Policy and Research documents how the New York City Criminal Justice Agency's peer specialist program has grown into a vital resource for people on pretrial supervision.
What's Happening: First introduced in 2018, the program hires individuals who have overcome challenges such as mental illness, addiction, domestic violence, and homelessness to help people enrolled in supervised release to succeed.
 “It’s so simple. It’s just saying, ‘Listen, I’ve walked this road before. If it’s okay with you, maybe I could walk with you for a little
while,’” said Jacob Biddle, right, a peer specialist.
Why it Matters: Peer specialists have a
unique ability to help individuals reach successful outcomes. Data from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration shows that people with behavioral health issues who participated in peer support programs were more likely to have increased self-esteem, reduced hospital admission rates, decreased substance use and depression, and an increased sense of control that they can create change in their lives.
What's Next: Supervised release programs rely on consistent funding and support from stakeholders throughout the criminal justice system. “I think outside of the agency, in the criminal justice realm as a whole, it was just a matter of educating and informing them on what peer support actually is,” said Frank Barretto, who oversees the peer specialist program.
Read the story > |
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$3.9 billion
Amount of debt to be canceled for 208,000 student borrowers defrauded by ITT Technical Institute
The U.S. Department of Education again wiped clean the debt of defrauded students in a targeted way, this week, forgiving $3.9 billion for 208,000 borrowers who attended ITT Technical Institute and $24 million in loan discharges for 1,800 borrowers at DeVry University. The Education Department will attempt to recoup those losses from DeVry according to Higher Ed Dive.
What's Happening: Students who used federal loans to attend ITT Technical Institute as far back as 2005 will automatically get that debt cleared after authorities found “widespread and pervasive misrepresentations” at the defunct for-profit college chain, the Biden administration announced Tuesday. The debt is being forgiven using a federal rule known as borrower defense, which is meant to protect students from colleges that make false advertising claims or otherwise commit fraud.
Dive Deeper: One of those students defrauded by ITT Tech was veteran Tasha Berkhalter, who was targeted by the school for her GI Bill benefits and enrolled in 2006 to pursue a career in criminal justice after recruiters promised she would easily find a job after graduating. After earning her bachelor’s degree, no one would hire her.
Berkhalter previously got much of her nearly $100,000 in debt erased through the borrower defense rule. In 2020, she talked to AV about the impact of being targeted by predatory, for-profit colleges for her GI Bill dollars. Read and hear more about her experience.
Related: President Biden is expected to soon make an announcement on whether the pause on federal student repayment, put in place in March 2020, will be extended. It expires Aug. 31.
Related: Starting at about 3:55 on NPR’s Houston Matters, listen to Aaron Ament from Student Defense talk about the U.S. Department of Education’s recent discharge of $3.9 billion in student loans from 208,000 borrowers who attended the predatory, now-defunct school ITT Tech.
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Criminal Justice
- Across the U.S., the number of those in prison is 16% lower today than before the pandemic, according to the Vera Institute of Justice, but Mississippi’s rate is skyrocketing, reports the Mississippi Center For Investigative Reporting.
- The American Bar Association calls for abolishing life without parole, writes Rory Fleming in an op-ed for Filter.
- Brookings highlights the importance of non-carceral responses to violence, citing AV-funded research from John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and the window of opportunity for federal funding.
- Two Pennsylvania judges who sent children to for-profit jails in exchange for kickbacks are ordered to pay more than $200 million in damages, Associated Press reports. “It’s a huge victory,” says Marsha Levick of Juvenile Law Center. “To have an order from a federal court that recognizes the gravity of what the judges did to these children in the midst of some of the most critical years of their childhood and development matters enormously, whether or not the money gets paid.”
- More and more artists are using their work to challenge long-held assumptions about the criminal justice system, writes The New York Times Style Magazine. (free link)
- More Black Americans live in Texas than any other state. Two years after George Floyd’s murder, Black Texans expressed frustration over uneven progress, restrictions on teaching about racism in public schools, and limitations on their political representation and voting access, Texas Tribune reports.
Health Care
- The Inflation Reduction Act is now law. Here are a few ways it will help lower health care costs, via NBC News.
- We've made progress toward lowering drug prices, but the fight isn't over. From Reuters, drug makers are launching new medicines at record-high prices.
- File under "do better": Few cancer centers are fully complying with a federal price transparency laws, from Axios.
- A lawyer and a physician who helped usher in the modern era or organ transplants argue in STAT that Congress and the Biden administration should move quickly to implement comprehensive recommendations made by the Senate Finance Committee.
Higher Education
- Accreditation shopping is a thing, apparently. Edward Conroy at New America outlines the role of accreditation and explains the Education Department’s move to prevent accreditor shopping. This effort is in part a response to Florida’s new law, which requires all public colleges and universities to switch accreditors every time they would normally renew accreditation, typically every five to ten years, and permits schools to sue accreditors if schools are “negatively impacted” by their work.
- When colleges close, student borrowers need to know. The Government Accountability Office’s recent report finds that outreach to student borrowers about their potential eligibility for a loan discharge is not timely, does not always contain complete information, and misses opportunities to provide additional information to the borrowers who are most at risk for default.
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The Washington Post reveals more about the Education Department’s “Fresh Start” program, where 7.5 million students who had previously defaulted on their student loans will be restored to good standing, be eligible for financial aid, and have the default removed from their credit history. (free link)
Contraceptive Choice and Access
- Contraception advocates are raising concerns about funding for Title X, the federal program that provides family planning and preventive care to low-income patients and has been long underfunded, reports NPR.
Evidence-Based Policy
Democracy
- Neal Simon and Todd DiPaola propose “Final Four” voting as a model for the nation’s voting system, in The Hill.
- The NBA announces games will no longer be held on Election Day, and it will instead encourage fans, players and staff to vote. “It’s unusual,” James Cadogan, executive director of the NBA’s Social Justice Coalition and a former VP of Criminal Justice at AV, told MSNBC. “But voting and Election Day are obviously unique and incredibly important to our democracy.”
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The Breakfast Club hosts Jessica Jackson, chief advocacy officer for REFORM Alliance, and Louis Reed, REFORM's
senior director of strategic partnerships, for a conversation on the organization's mission to change our country's criminal justice system. Jackson was compelled to this work by personal experience: At 22, with her 2-month-old daughter in her arms, she watched her husband be sentenced to six years in prison in a Georgia courtroom. It inspired her to attend college, get a law degree, and become a public defender. Now she works on local, state, and federal policy change. They discuss probation reform, setting people released from prison up for success, expunging cannabis records, and more.
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The Center for Health Care Strategies is seeking states to participate in the "Medicare Academy: Capacity-Building for Advancing Medicare-Medicaid Integration" — a 10-month training program designed to help Medicaid staff build the Medicare knowledge needed to successfully advance integration efforts. Up to eight state teams will be selected for the academy, which is made possible by Arnold Ventures, The Commonwealth Fund, and The SCAN Foundation. Medicaid agencies in all states, commonwealths, and territories are eligible to apply. The academy will be provided at no cost to participating teams. Applications are due Sept. 9, 2022. Learn more and apply
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- “In Black and Latino communities we’re told our lives are disposable,” he said, “just like the land is.” Two formerly incarcerated individuals who trained to fight fires in prison have formed a nonprofit to help others to earn a living battling wildfires.
- Strangers rally to help Uvalde students and teachers return to school after the mass shooting in May. "For the Uvalde community, it's just letting them know that they are not forgotten," Amanda Stevens, a mom of two from Dallas, Texas, tells Good Morning America. "We will be here and we will honor their losses and support them with whatever they need."
- Willie Nelson is approaching 90 but is far from slowing down. Read this great profile in The New York Times Style Magazine. (free link)
- Meet this year's child Mullet Championship finalists and vote for your favorite before polls close today.
- Here's a fun (and calming) time-waster: Paint with music.
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Have an evidence-based week,
– Stephanie
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Stephanie DiCapua Getman develops and executes Arnold Ventures' digital communications strategy with a focus on multimedia storytelling and audience engagement and oversees daily editorial operations and design.
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