The election

NPR -  Voters in a record number of states — including the battlegrounds of Arizona and Nevada — are set to decide this fall whether to enact far-reaching changes to how their elections are run.  Most of the proposals would replace party primaries with nonpartisan contests, where all candidates, regardless of party, appear on the same ballot and some number of candidates, like the "top four" vote-getters, move on to the general election.

Nick Troiano — founding executive director of Unite America, a philanthropic venture fund that invests in nonpartisan electoral reform — called this year “an inflection point for the primary reform movement.”....

Several of the ballot measures would pair nonpartisan primaries with ranked choice voting for general elections. (Alaska, on the other hand, will vote on getting rid of its ranked choice system.)...

Currently, five states have some nonpartisan primaries, and Troiano said their elections see higher participation among voters, as well as fewer uncontested races and better representation in government...

Opponents of these measures argue nonpartisan primaries strip power away from parties to control who can vote in their elections. They also say big changes in how elections work, including ranked choice voting, can confuse voters.

Another critique is that the promise of reform under a nonpartisan system has been overstated, as some research on whether these systems have led to the election of more moderate candidates has found mixed results.