Which implies that she was at least moderately acceptable to almost everyone. That doesn’t sound all that bad, as politics goes.
I’m with you on this one, even if I suspect we are otherwise a few political poles apart. In the old system you could state a party affiliation and get the primary ballot for that party, or else you wrote in Decline to state when registering to vote. You didn’t get to vote in any of the primaries, and that was fair enough in my opinion. Voters wanting to participate in that stage of the process should be able to choose a party that they prefer, even if only on the basis of being least objectionable.
I also don’t like the fact that we are now allowed to cast “spoiler” votes for candidates of a different party. To be fair, I’m not sure how much actual impact this has, however.
When it comes down to it, you aren’t really voting for a candidate as much as you’re voting for what you want the candidate to do. Allowing multiple people that want to do the same thing not only divides the vote, but makes the decision about much more trivial issues such as who is the better speaker or who looks more capable.
That’s what used to happen in California, of course, up till this year.
The goal of this plan is to eliminate the problem that in the primaries, the Republicans tend to vote for the most right-wing person on their ballot, and the Democrats tend to vote for the most left-wing person, so that in the general election the choice is between two extremes. It was hoped that by having everyone vote in the same primary, the result would be two moderates in the general.
Well, that was the goal in any case.
I’m not sure if you’re criticizing this outcome, but that’s exactly how it’s supposed to work. Suppose choices, to be extreme, are:
41% A > B > C
39% C > B > A
10% B > C > A
10% B > A > C
If you have a regular election (and no one voted strategically) you’d elect A with 41% plurality. With an instant run-off or ranking system, you’d elect B on the second go through with 59%. Since more people prefer B to A, doesn’t that make sense?
True you could get this result if all of the 39% realized that C can’t win and voted for their second choice B. But this requires that everyone know what the true percentages are. If the C voters don’t know if they are the 39%ers or the 41%ers, they don’t want to vote for B because they might get C their first choice.
(And yes I do know about the Arrow Impossibility Theorem that there is no perfect design. The AIT doesn’t mean, though that there aren’t bad designs.)
From what I’ve read, the theory behind open primaries is that allowing everybody to choose the candidates to be offered will encourage candidates that appeal to everybody, not just rulers of their party.
AFAIK, parties hate it because they’re afraid people will sabotage the parties by choosing the bad candidates so the opposing party has a better candidate in the general election.
If having too many popular candidates from the same party causes a problem, than there’s something wrong with the system or the voters. Besides, you can always write in your preferred candidate, even in the general election
Not in California. California only allows write-in votes for registered write-in candidates. (You can still write something in that space, assuming they even include it when there are no write-in candidates (Ohio doesn’t), but you’re just defacing the ballot rather than voting.)
ETA: California doesn’t allow write-in votes at all in the general election according to this. (PDF)
Thanks, Chronos, I am glad I’m not the only one who had no idea what they were talking about.
Agreed, you certainly don’t request a party ballot for the General in PA. And strictly speaking you don’t request a party ballot in the primary. When you come in, I give you the ballot of the party with which you are registered. I’ve had people show up at the polls telling me that they had intended to switch but forgot and I can’t do anything for them.