Wisconsin Legislative Leaders Plan to Reconvene Legislature to Change Laws on Special Elections

Last week a Wisconsin state trial court ruled that Governor Scott Walker must schedule two special legislative elections soon. The two seats have been vacant since December 2017. On March 23, Republican leaders of the legislature said they will call the legislature back into session so as to revise the law concerning special elections, so as to avoid having such special elections. See this story.


Comments

Wisconsin Legislative Leaders Plan to Reconvene Legislature to Change Laws on Special Elections — 7 Comments

  1. Candidate/incumbent replacement lists.

    NO more high cost / low turnout special elections

    — in which new movers into area may be getting 2 or more votes for the office involved during a term.

  2. Exactly demo rep! The incumbent/replacement list idea has been working in countries like belgium and would be a shake up to the duopoly, since it would be basically a 2-member election where 33.34% of the vote is needed to get a seat and voters can rank candidates in order of prefefence. 🙂

  3. While I agree with DemoRep and Derek for the future that some replacement method should be setup, UNTIL that time Governors should exercise their responsibility and call for special elections. No district should have to go unrepresented for a year solely because a governor or legislative majority does not wish the seat filled by an opposing party – whether that is Wisconsin, Michigan, Alabama or anywhere. So, special elections to fill vacancies should be promptly.

  4. Pure proportional representation is always the most perfect solution and it is based on the principle that one vote will break a 50/50 tie and one vote will always break ties of three or moe in a 33.33, plus one vote, tie-bteaker.

    The United Coalition timed perfecting in 2018, we are in email communication with 80 of the 111 California State candidates in single winner districts now, working on a humanitarian project, under pure proportional representation (PPR).

    We welcome participation but the party bosses have fought PPR viciously because they are using pluralist psychology which thinks fighting is better than teamwork.

    Our team prohibits all plurality votes is only counting paper ballots under PPR in Earth Day.

    http//www.international-parliament.org/ucc.html

  5. I agree with you James! The idea DemoRep and I support, the representative/alternate list idea, would use the single transferable vote by electing two candidates: the first candidate reaching 33.34% of the vote becomes representative, while the second candidate getting the same threshold becomes alternate. This idea would eventually crack the duopoly since voters will finally see that the spoiler effect is just a lie and all candidates will have to compete with everybody, no matter the party! 😉

  6. Legislative — multiple persons on a vacancy list.

    NO executive/judicial vacancy lists.

  7. Eliminate election *day*. Let a voter vote once per month, and permit them to accumulate up to 12 months of votes. Votes would expire after 12 months. Thus people who move into a district, or turn 18 could begin voting immediately after registering. People who die or move would stop accumulating votes, and their old votes would gradually expire.

    If a race were close, candidates would encourage their supporters to vote regularly to change the result, and also encourage non-voters to vote, since the result could change month to month.

    If an office became vacant, then all past votes would expire, and voters could begin voting immediately for the office.

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