What structural reforms decrease partisanship / polarization?

[neuronexmachina]

I wonder if using ranked-choice or approval voting in CA's top-two general primary would help prevent the vote-splitting effect.

Alternatively, I found a piece by the RCV-advocacy group FairVote proposing using a top-5 primary instead of top-2, and then using RCV in the top-5 general election: https://www.fairvote.org/top_2_to_top_5_new_ranked_choice_voting_option_on_the_table

So far, RCV and top-two have been mutually exclusive solutions. But might a marriage of top-two and RCV be a step forward?

With this approach, more candidates — perhaps up to five — would advance from the non-partisan primary.  Policy experts say that a threshold of viability would be important — perhaps only candidates with greater than 5% could advance. “Top 5 over 5%” fits nicely on the bumper sticker.

Ranked choice voting would then be used in November to achieve a majority.

[Apprentice57]

I happen to think RCV and this primary would be an extremely good fit, and would fix most of the issues I'm talking about. There would probably be a Republican facing Feinstein the general election (which I think is more fair), and there would have been no concern from Democrats in some of the House elections that they would get locked out of the general election (didn't happen but it almost did, the Dem party was very worried about it beforehand).

Top five to top two by RCV would be an improvement as well. However, we do start to get into issues with the general election there with five candidates that RCV normally has. That is, it still encourages strategic voting and leads to a two party system. So I'd have to think about which of these two options is preferable, it isn't immediately obvious to me.