All ballot-qualified parties in North Dakota nominate by primary. The primary is open. On primary day, all voters are free to choose any party’s primary ballot. The only ballot-qualified parties in North Dakota in 2010, and also in 2014, were the Republican, Democratic, and Libertarian Parties.
Although it is not possible to know the exact number of voters who choose any party’s primary, it is possible to know this approximately, by looking at the primary election returns. In the June 2010 primary, the largest vote total received by any Republican candidate was 65,205 votes; the largest vote total for any Democrat was 28,404 votes; the largest for any Libertarian was 548 votes.
By contrast, in June 2014, the largest vote total for any Republican was 50,446; for any Democrat, 30,154; for any Libertarian, 1,555. Thus while Republican primary voters dropped 22.6%, and Democratic primary turnout stayed approximately the same, Libertarian primary participation tripled.
Parties remain qualified by polling 5% in November for certain statewide offices. The only third parties that have met the North Dakota vote test to remain ballot-qualified in the last 100 years were the Reform Party in 1996, and the Socialist Party in 1914. The Libertarian Party is optimistic that, for the first time, it will meet the 5% vote test this November. This year, the only office that counts, for which the party has a nominee, is the Secretary of State’s race. Attorney General also counts, but no Libertarian is running for that office.
To expect to achieve a 5% vote threshold when their membership is below 1.5% doesn’t sound like something to be overly confident of success.
Team psychology = under sell and over perform.
I don’t know why you mention 1.5%, when the Libertarian voters were 1.9%. In any event, if you had waded through as many election returns as I have over the last 55 years, you would have a different opinion. Minor party membership is invariably a tiny percentage of the number of voters who cast votes for minor party candidates. Even the Progressive Party of Vermont, which elects multiple state legislators every election, has a tiny share of the electorate voting in its open primary.
At least he didn’t go into his usual USA Parliament nonsense!
I agree with Casual Bystander!
My apologies for stating the percentage of registered Libertarian members in North Dakota incorrectly.
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We at the USA Parliament are also conducting an election in North Dakota in 2014, known as the PacificNW Super-state Parliament Election of 2014.
This election is guaranteed to elect all the names up to the first 1000 names in a ten-state region.
All those with rankings #1 to #1000, are elected, a 1/1001th (or .0999%) plus one vote threshold.
That guarantees a 99.9% (plus 1000 votes) guaranteed satisfaction level under pure proportional representation.
The .0999 plus one vote threshold for being elected is an extremely exact detail of the voting electorate and that is a detail everyone can support.
It’s as close as you can come to a 1001-way tie, where the first 1000 names garnering one additional vote break the tie in consecutive order. But the 1001th ranked name is not elected.
This changes everything because there isn’t a better way to be mathematically inclusive of everyone in a 1000-member assembly than pure proportional representation(PR).
That way we’re being all-inclusive, i.e. we like/love everyone, even though everyone doesn’t always like/love us.
That creates funny humor too because we’re like Pepe’ Le Pew; we love you but you don’t love us. 😉
There are no registered voters in North Dakota at all. There is no such thing as voter registration in North Dakota. Voters don’t register to vote. They just show up at the polls and vote.
You continue to refer to choosing a party’s ballot, as if they are separate ballots. North Dakota’s pick-a-party primary works like it did in Washington and Idaho, not like in Montana.
All the candidates are on a single ballot in different sections. A voter is expected to stay within a single party’s section. If they stray and cross-vote, all their votes are invalid. This is unlike Montana, where voters are given a ballot for each party, they mark one and deposit it in the ballot box, and place the others in a discard box. You might recall when the Montana SOS issued here totally stupid ruling with regard to the Libertarian senate primary. She did so, because she did not want to have counties printing thousands of Libertarian ballot papers to be discarded.
It appears that considerable numbers of North Dakotans do cross-over, perhaps treating the primary like a blanket primary. Generally, there are at least 10% more ballots cast than there are votes for partisan candidates.
In 2010, the popular Republican governor John Hoeven was on the ballot, unopposed for the top-of-the-ballot nomination for senator. He received about 4,000 more votes than were cast in the contested race for US representative. The 7-term Democratic representative Earl Pomeroy received the most votes in the Democratic primary.
If a voter wished to support both Hoeven and Poweroy (22% of all voters did so in the 2010 general election), they would have to vote for one or the other. If they did vote for both, the ballot would be spoiled for both.
Meanwhile interfering Democrats, who voted for their senate nominee, and then weighed in on the only contested race on the ballot, that for the Republican nominee for ccngress would also have spoiled their ballot.
NO primaries.
P.R. and nonpartisan App.V.
There is also early voting in ND.
With three Libertarians running, including two for state-wide office (Secretary of State and Treasurer), a lot more needs to be done to unite with all the ND voters and not just Rs, Ds and Ls.
We’re am able to build with the Rs, Ds, Ls and all voters, for the good of the all.
Fortunately, people like us care about these things. We’re much more dynamic and far better team builders with team psychology than we are without and like they say; “team = together everyone achieves more”.