Washington Governor Christine Gregoire is set to sign HB 5119 on May 12. It eliminates the presidential primary. Also on March 12, the Kansas Senate passed HB 2080, which cancels that state’s presidential primary. Because the Kansas provision has passed both houses, it is extremely likely to be signed into law. The motivation for these bills in both states is to save money. Thanks to Frontloading HQ for this news. UPDATE: the Washington bill did get signed, as expected; see this story.
Soooo – more power to the robot party hacks meeting in top secret behind closed doors ??? — gee — just as in the evil bad old days ???
Stopping subsidies to political parties is a good thing.
If the purpose is to save money, why don’t we just abolish elections altogether??? (I’m being sarcastic, sorry) That way we’ll save ourselves a lot of money, and a lot of stress watching all those attack ads between candidates.
The primary is, in my opinion, the best method of choosing candidates among political party members, at least for large parties. It allows a larger participation than other methods (I think it is better to have a candidate chosen by, say, 5% of the state voters than by just a select few) [Of course I take into account that what is a large number of voters varies from one state to another)
Smaller parties can use conventions, if they don’t have enough people for a primary, as long as ample notice is given about when and where they are going to be held.
Just my two cents.
What? Of course we should have presidential primaries. The voters need more choices and more participation in the selection process of candidates instead of pushing a candidate with a (R) or a (D) at the end of their name and saying “Here, pick one.” This gives more power to the establishment of the political parties and takes away the rights of voters.
The nomination of a candidate, for President or State house rep, is a party function and has no place in public elections.
Each party should select their candidate by what ever process they choose, I like selection the last one standing after a drinking competition. Then that candidate goes on the ballot.
We should get rid of all primaries with only a general election. Those races without a winner who has more than 50% of the vote would go to a run-off election 6 weeks later. No new voter registrations would be allowed until after the election is concluded -so after the run-off.
In Washington we have the Top 2 system (Cali just adopted too their doom) where minor parties have no chance to be on the general election ballot.
#5, your on to something. To make it work, first we would need a fairer way for all candidates to get on the election ballot: party paid selection process endorsed candidates, party members not endorsed but still wants to run, independents, and write-ins. The OPEN ELECTION would then allow ALL the voters to vote. My choice would be an IRV vote allowing the voter to select first a favorite son/daughter or vanity candidate then their ranked choices. Then maybe if no candidate gets 50% + 1 you go to a Top Two runoff.
Didn’t WA and KS have both primaries and caucuses? I assume they will still have the caucuses. So this move makes these states no less democratic than Iowa.
Bolshevik, Washington went to Prez primary awhile ago, but the parties didn’t have to use the results. I believe the last prez, the R’s used the primary for 50% & the D’s didn’t use it at all. Can’t remember when the primary came in, possibly after 2000, before that we were caucus.
Mike, if you aren’t put on the ballot by a party, then you should be able to be on the ballot as non-partisan, but you can’t use a party label if the party doesn’t put you on. A low signature requirement for ballot access might work. I think our ’06 Senate candidate needed 1,000 signatures on a single day. I think a couple weeks to get the signatures would be better.
IRV is difficult for the elections departments (County auditors in Washington except for King co -Seattle). I’d be happy to do the General/Run off and that would probably be the best we could hope for. Maybe after getting that we could try IRV, but right now IRV is opposed by the auditors & Pierce Co -Tacoma dropped what they had. But why not have some time to campaign again for the top 2?
Approval Voting for all executive/judicial offices – vote for 1 or more – highest win
— pending major public education about Condorcet head to head number math (from the 1780s – repeat 1780s) — 1, 2, 3, etc.