What with the country’s biggest blowhard running against the country’s most-hated woman for President, and the first real chance in a generation to rid itself of the biggest blowhard in the county, I haven’t really been paying attention to other states’ races, so the LA senate race requiring a runoff caught me by surprise.
Twenty-four people running for one senate seat. The biggest vote-getter received about 25% of the votes. Since it wasn’t over 50% the top two, an R and a D, will face a runoff come December the 10th.
I was thinking it was some sort of election forced suddenly by someone dying or going to jail but no, their previous Senator has simply decided to retire at the end of the term.
Haven’t these people heard of a primary election? Is this some sort of quirk in Code Napoléon I haven’t heard of before? Just how did this come about?
Louisiana has a 2 round system, aka the jungle primary. Everybody runs on the same ballot in the general election and if nobody wins a majority the top 2 candidates go to a run off the next month. It’s just a coincidence the President of France is chosen the same way. Actually I think Louisiana might very well have been first.
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California also uses the jungle primary. Two Dems faced each other in the senatorial race yesterday. It seems to me a perfectly reasonable system that we would do well to emulate here in Canada where people often win with 35% of the vote. Of course, there are no primaries here. Basically, the parties nominate their preferred candidates, usually by a local caucus, and the party leader can–although he usually doesn’t–just name them.
One of the consequences of this is that no member of parliament dare oppose the prime minister on a vote since doing so is tantamount to resigning from the party.
Not exactly. California uses the top-two primary; meaning the top 2 candidates advance to the next round even if one wins over 50% of the vote. In Louisiana’s jungle primary if a candidate wins a majority in the 1st round there is no 2nd round.
Texas politicians regard Louisiana as embarrassingly corrupt. That takes some doin’.
Louisiana IS embarrassingly corrupt. But that’s not particularly relevant to their method of “chusing” their political masters. 
Really, nothing to see here. The runoff system is a “perfectly cromulent” method of conducting direct popular-vote elections and it is used around the world. California has it happen on the primary date, Louisiana on the general. The idea is that whoever’s seated needs a majority vote, not a mere plurality, and that you are not entitled to be in the final choice just because you belong to one of the two major parties…
Hasn’t Louisiana pretty much always done it this way (with both its House and Senate seats), but until somewhat recently, had the “first round” vote in June and the “runoff” if necessary in November?
Until the late 1990s (Edwards admin.). During the 00’s alternating administrations rolled back (Blanco) then restored (Jindal) the change.
The state of Washington, like California, uses a “top two” primary rather than an all-comers general+runoff.
Logistically, General-All-Comers + runoff means that if there’s a clear majority you save yourself the hassle of the runoff and can use the unspent reserved money on something else. But, you do not know ahead of time what election will you need to set up. With Top-Two-Open-Primary the scenario is since you are already scheduled to set the election system in motion twice in the year anyway, you might as well use both dates.
(One thing to bear in mind: for “downballot” races, the primary often happens months after the Presidential, some as late as September. )