The Santa Fe New Mexican for August 24 has this op-ed by Carol Miller, a leading activist for independent candidates. It rebuts the column carried by the same newspaper several weeks ago, the New York Times piece (reprinted in the New Mexican) by U.S. Senator Charles Schumer, advocating top-two primaries. UPDATE: the piece is now in Counterpunch as well, with a few minor changes.
Big canyon between the friend of the voter(s) and the friend of Wall street.
I see Schumer shutting up about this as Miller owns it.
Attention all op-ed math MORONS —
NO primaries.
P.R. and nonpartisan App.V.
The fallacy of her argument is that she thinks that elections are for the purpose of expressing individual political views, rather than for their actual purpose of making a collective choice.
Elections have many purposes, and Carol Miller understands that. So did the US Supreme Court, in Williams v Rhodes, Communist Party of Indiana v Whitcomb, New York State Board of Elections v Socialist Workers Party (1970 summary affirmance), Lubin v Panish, Salera v Tucker (1976 summary affirmance), Illinois State Board of Elections v Socialist Workers Party, Anderson v Celebrezze, Norman v Reed, all cases in which the US Supreme Court put candidates on the ballot (or agreed with lower courts that they should be on the ballot) even though everyone knew the candidates in question wouldn’t win.
Election = Making choices
A bit meaningless in the 97 plus percent rigged gerrymander areas in the USA.
P.R. and nonpartisan App.V.
You confuse the improbability of a candidate being successful, with a voter merely wanting to express some opinion. Burdick v Takashi said that there was no constitutional right to write in “Donald Duck” on a ballot.
Most of those decisions were related to elections where there were segregated partisan nominations, and there was no opportunity for a candidate to appear on the ballot before November. As Washington and Nebraska have demonstrated, there is no need for party qualification for a Top 2 Open Primary.
Donald Lubin wanted to qualify for a Top 2 primary election. The current plaintiffs in California are hypocritical. The high number of signatures required for Roy Almond’s candidacy were at least as burdensome as for some candidate who had the backing of the Green, Peace&Freedom, or Libertarian political machines.
If New Mexico had a Top 2 Open Primary, Carol Miller would (or could) have run in the June primary.
California non-partisan elections are not the same as top-two elections. In a California non-partisan election, the first round is an election, because candidates can be elected, and usually are.
Why don’t you ever mention your opinion of ranked-choice voting, which is a far superior system than top-two?