Open primaries are on the ballot this year in OR. What are the positives and negatives of having this type of primary?
THe positive is more participation in choosing candidates. The negative is the potential for sabotage as the partisans of one candidate seek to give them an opponent they can beat easily.
My own preference is the jungle primary. I’m cool with open primaries, but I prefer the jungle primary because sometimes the best candidate to the general electorate might not be one of the choices of the party faithful.
Think about the 2008 election. What if instead of what actually happened, there was a jungle primary with all the candidates? Who would be the top two vote getters? Very likely, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. And in a general election, I think Clinton would very likely have beaten Obama. You’d also get a different result in 2000 and 2004 probably. In 2000, a jungle primary would have seen a straight Bush vs. Gore contest with no Nader. Gore wins. In 2004, Bush would have finished first, but probably fallen short of a majority, and instead of Kerry, a better Democrat would have probably taken 2nd, maybe Clark, or Lieberman(Lieberman would obviously do a hell of a lot better with the general electorate than in a Democratic primary). The Democrats would have had a better shot at beating Bush then.
Actually, when California first switched to the jungle primary format, a few people noticed a clause in the Republican Party rules saying that if any non-Republicans could vote in a state’s Republican Presidential Primary, then the primary wouldn’t count and the state convention would choose the delegates, so the state announced, IIRC, that there would be two “counts” - one including all voters, and one counting just registered Republicans (which was the count used to allocate the delegates). Since then, California has made specific “registered party members only” exceptions for electing Presidential convention delegates and party committee members.
What do they mean by “open primaries”? In Indiana, regardless of your party of registration, you can vote for either party in the primary, but you must choose one party to vote for, Republican or Democrat. No other party, so far as I know has ever had a contested primary that needed a vote count in this state. Since Republicans and Democrats jointly staff the polls, and you are supposed to be registered as one of the other, and work for that party, to ensure even numbers of each one (except for the inspector, of which each polling place has only one, and that person’s party is the majority in the legislature).
Occasionally, there are elections where people cross party lines to vote, in order to try to elect an easier opponent for their own candidate in the general election, but in those rare cases, they must be assured the person they favor in their own party has the election locked up, and they must also be so concerned about one particular race, that they give up the right to vote for their own party in all races. You mostly see in in mayoral races when that is the highest office being elected. The governor and president are elected in the same year, mainly, I think, to discourage cross-voting for governor, because people will be more invested in own-party voting in the presidential primary.
My uncle was a precinct committeeman, so I worked at a lot of elections. I was a poll book holder before I could even vote, and the a judge (the person who sets the machine) once I could vote, and be an official, paid worker.
One of the reasons for making sure there are even numbers of people of both parties is that any time a person had a problem and requests assistance, a worker from each party has to go and help-- it can’t be just one person.
Could someone define “open primaries” and “jungle primaries”?
I prefer a single public primary election from which only the two candidates with the most votes compete in the general election.
This accomplishes two things. First, it is better at picking candidates with wide-spread appeal. That is, candidates who appeal to a greater overall number of voters rather than those that appeal merely to a large number of partisan votes.
Second, it reduces the power of the political parties. Politicians should be follow their constituents first and party second. Things like “party loyalty” and “party discipline” put the party ahead of the voters. While the party’s interests may sometimes align with the constituents’, I’d prefer that conflicts be resolved in the voters’ favor.
Also, so long as the primary election is paid for with public money, the public gets to decide the rules of the election. If a party does not want non-members meddling with the candidate selection, they can use their own private means of selection.
The Oregon proposal is in fact for a top two first round election, with a runoff between the top two finishers, regardless of party, where no candidate gets a majority. It will not apply to presidential primaries.
I dislike even calling such an election a “primary”, because it has nothing to do with traditional party primaries. It’s the first round of a two-round general election.
I have reservations about such a system. If one party has two candidates running and the other has five, the party with two may claim both runoff spots just because its votes are divided fewer ways.
Open primary means that any voter can vote in one party’s primary, regardless of their registration.
Jungle primary means that on election day all the candidates from all the parties are on the ballot and assuming no one wins a majority, the top two have a runoff in December. Louisiana uses this system. So if the 2008 election had been done this way you’re Presidential ballot in November would have looked something like this:
------> Barack Obama
------> Hillary Clinton
------> John McCain
------> Mike Huckabee
------> Mitt Romney
------> John Edwards
The reason I like it is that there’s no way to “waste” your vote. You don’ t have to worry that a vote for a likely third or fourth place finisher will hurt the person you’re willing to settle for who can win. You can save the “lesser of two evils” choice for the December runoff when you only get two choices. There’s also no way to sabotage a candidate. You’re not going to see Democrats vote for an unelectable Republican to make things easier for the top Democrat, because if they do that, their top Democrat might not make the runoff.
Okay, thank you. I like the idea of the ballot ranking system – so in 2000, a Nader supporter could have ranked the candidates 1. Nader, 2. Gore, 3. Bush, 4. Buchanan, or something like that, such that the top two candidates in #1 rankings get the “castoffs” – in this way, one can express 3rd party support without “throwing away your vote”.
The two parties would hate this, of course.
That’s cool too, but it’s also more complex. Jungle primaries are simple. THe chief drawback is that you have to vote twice most of the time, which I know gives one particular party the vapors.
The system I was describing is called “Instant-Runoff Voting”, apparently. Some places already are using it. I suppose each state would have to institute it, assuming no constitutional amendment.
It’s actually used now? I had no idea.
Of course this would all be done at the state level. Open primaries I think are already done in almost half the states.
If we’re going to talk about voting systems and not just election systems, I’m a fan of approval voting. Each voter can vote for as many or as few candidates for each office as they like. The candidate with the most votes wins (or two top advance to the general, etc). Much simpler than instant run-off and retains many of the advantages (minor candidates can gather votes without “stealing” them from major candidates) and few of the disadvantages (small changes in order can results substantially).
One big disadvantage of this system, if I understand it correctly, is that the #1 choice of a majority or plurality of voters can actually lose under this scenario.
Yes, although I wouldn’t call it a disadvantage. It’s a design choice.
Do we want the voting system to select the candidate who is the first choice of the most voters, or the candidate who is approved by the most voters? The first choice of the most voters may be strongly opposed by a large (but smaller) number of voters as well. The candidate approved by the most voters may not be the first choice of any voter, but is not opposed as much as any other candidate.
I’ve seen enough of our current system that I’d like to switch to the approval system.
I think the last few mayoral elections in San Francisco have used a variation on this, where you can rank up to three candidates.
I think instant runoff is fine if there are only a few (no more than, say, six) candidates for that office. More than that, and either you are limited in how many candidates you can rank, which partially defeats the purpose of the method, or you have to have a method to rank everybody, which would probably result in a combination of mandated electronic machine voting (for the polling places) and a hand count (for the absentee ballots, since the candidates would almost certainly be ranked by putting numbers into boxes).
However, there will never be a method that pleases everybody. It’s possible that, in a 3-way race, 1/3 of the votes rank the candidates A-B-C, 1/3 rank them B-C-A, and 1/3 rank them C-A-B; no matter who you choose, 2/3 of the voters will complain that they ranked a particular other candidate higher (e.g. if A wins, 2/3 of the voters had C ranked higher than A).
If by more participation you’re referring to voters showing up when their parties primaries are mostly a formality, you leave out what I consider a positive. The times I crossed parties I was going to vote anyway (non-partisan issues and elections are usually still on the ballot). I crossed to pick a more challenging opponent for the de facto selection of my party. I wanted someone who was going to make my personal voting decision harder . A crazy, inexperienced, rabidly partisan, paste eater from the other party that nobody sees as having a chance of winning… can still win.
Actually, that would reduce the number of polarizing candidates getting into office. Not a bad outcome IMO.
Minneapolis uses the Instant Runoff Voting method for city elections, with Primaries eliminated.
In 2013, there were 35 candidates filed for Mayor. Voters could rank 3 candidates 1-2-3 (next election, the machines will allow ranking up to 6 choices). The top 6 candidates had 88% of the vote, the other 29 candidates split the remaining votes (most had less than 1%). Of these candidates, 24 got less votes than the number of signatures needed to file for office by petition.
Because of this large number, there is now a Charter Change on November’s ballot to increase the filing fee (currently $20). It seems likely to pass – voters complained loudly about this large number of candidates, and it was real hard to hold Forums, debates, etc. with this many candidates.
You think that was bad? In the 2003 California governor’s recall election, there were over 100 candidates to replace toe governor; it took up four pages of the ballot. To make it worse, California doesn’t list names alphabetically, but has a randomly-drawn “alphabetical order” each year or two.