Douglas E. Goodman, a Nevadan who is an advocate of election reform, favors eliminating the primary and simply holding a general election. The general election would use Instant Runoff Voting. Parties would be given the choice to either nominate someone for each office (at their own expense), or else abstain from nominating, thus allowing multiple members of that party to file for the November ballot.
Read Goodman’s proposal here. It is not clear if any legislator has agreed to sponsor this idea, but if the idea is introduced, it would apparently be in 2017.
Instant Runoff Voting is a failed voting system which requires a threshold of 50% (plus one vote) as votes are single-transferred to one winner.
Top Two is a better reform because that would at least create a 33.33% (plus one vote) guaranteed threshold, and with the split vote problem, the threshold gets randomly lowered with each additional name on the ballot, making random wins by third parties more possible since the larger parties run multiple candidates more often.
The 9th USA Parliament never uses IRV and our guidelines prohibit IRV and any other single-winner election district.
If you’d like to see teamwork, inclusion, cooperation and unity of the whole, then use the 9th USA Parliament model for fair elections and reject IRV.
Pure proportional representation (PR) works fine, and we have been able to unite and grow for twenty consecutive years, never removed a single person and in 2012, 100% of the votes cast elected members of parliament (MPs) for a 100% satisfaction level, and this is effective until saturation which isn’t expected for a long time.
We’re having fun, everyone loves the new USA and International Parliament United Coalition, won’t you join us?
http://www.usparliament.org/signup.php
If the Parliament has grown for 20 years, why are you the only person who ever comments here in support of it? Where are all the other participants? Why don’t they chime in and give you a hand?
Goodman seems to think that voters will become more involved with their political parties under his proposed system. I think that would be unlikely, since that would require them to participate in party meetings.
Parties are unlikely to nominate more than one candidate, because it would be irrational for them to do so. Some voters won’t rank all of a party’s candidates. While more candidates will likely attract more first preferences, they might not stick around for the second, etc. preferences.
In Minneapolis, racial and ethnic minorities were less likely to use all their preferences.
He appears to reserve special powers to political parties to have their candidates appear on the ballot. Under Top 2 all candidates have the same qualifications.
He speaks favorably of the Louisiana system. He thinks that they hold the general election in November, with a runoff in December, when actually the general election is in October, with a runoff in November.
If Nevada would move their closed primary to a non-partisan primary in September or October, they would get better turnout. If political parties wanted to participate, they could print slate cards.
Richard, you may call, phone or email any of our members yourself. When asked to phone you by me, they declined.
Convenient!
@Jim Riley, Your assumptions are not correct. Voter registration trends show voters leaving the two major parties. Primary turnout in NV averages 20%. The 27% of NV voters not registered with either the R’s or D’s have no say. So even now, party members are not involved. The goal is not to increase the influence of parties but rather increase the importance of all voters, especially those who have been left behind by the parties shifting to the extremes. Whether or not the parties nominate or endorse is up to them. Internal operations of the parties have been upheld several times by SCOTUS. They can even hold a primary at no cost to taxpayers. I personally believe it would be counter productive to them to place only one candidate on the ballot. I’ve already been asked does that mean a party could prevent a registered member from filing and appearing on the ballot. Holding only one election in November when turnout averages 60% in non-presidential years and 75% in presidential years will require all candidates; don’t forget there are minor parties and independent candidates on the ballot as well, to address the concerns of all voters not just the so-call party base. My proposal in 2015 that was proposed in the legislative session included a top-three primary and RCV / IRV in the general. Major flaw of top two is that it eliminates the input of minor party and independent candidates. No independent or minor party candidate has ever advanced where top two is used. CA turnout has not improved.
You are correct that some ballots are not completed, however, those numbers are very small. The surveys I link in the article show how well RCV / IRV is understood by voters.
During the hearing on my bill last session the major complaint were the loss of ballot access by minor parties and the idea of non-party members participating in the primary. The later of course is a misunderstanding of the open, non-partisan primary. Holding a single election in November, as I state, does not undermine the right of the parties but does address the issue of every voter being considered important and move the discussion of the issues back to where most voters reside. Voters have left the two major parties because they no longer believe the party represents their views. By not having to go to the extreme in the primary then struggle to move back to the middle for the general, parties may actually regain some of their lost membership.
@Doug Goodman
Your blog said:
“The Republican and Democratic Parties could see a reversal of the trend of losing members.”
I don’t think this is likely. Many new voters are not registering in parties, even though it provides the tangible benefit of being allowed to vote in primaries where most legislators are chosen. Eliminate the partisan primaries, and voters won’t start returning. I don’t say that this is a bad thing, but that you have an unrealistic expectation.
Louisiana just held their open primary, and in a few weeks will hold a runoff. Since the governor’s race will be in the runoff, turnout for the runoff will be as high as for the primary.
They elected two independent legislators. Most of the contested races were between Republicans or between Democrats. The candidates were able to campaign as individuals and didn’t have to emphasize their loyalty to the parties.
Louisianans are used to it. When the legislature was restoring the Open Primary to congressional elections, one representative thought it inconceivable that he would have to go up to a voter, and the voter would tell him, “I really like you, but I’m a Democrat”, and having to tell him, thanks for the support, and could you vote for me in the general election.
A closed primary forces candidates to focus on voters who may legally vote for them. It is actually illegal to vote for the candidate you want to hold office. You can give him cash, and put up yard signs, and canvass for him, but you can’t vote for him. How silly is that?
Nevada doesn’t have to hold its primary in June.
Will the voters bother to rank the candidates when there are many offices on the ballot? The Houston city elections are going on right now, in conjunction with referendum on state constitutional issues. I voted for 8 offices and 9 ballot issues. And now you expect me to rank a bunch of candidates. I also have to figure out if my second and third choices are viable.
It will be much simpler to come back next month and vote in the runoff, where I will be able to hear the debate between the finalists.
The Minneapolis poll you linked to was very unreliable. The pollsters wanted to question both voters and non-voters, so as to find out what voters thought of voting, and if non-voters didn’t vote because of IRV.
The problem is the share of “voters” was much higher than the share of actual voters. The 2009 Minneapolis election featured an incumbent mayor with no significant challengers. You didn’t have to wait until December when they finally finished tabulating ballots to know he would be re-elected. You could know it in September when candidates filed. Turnout was not not particularly high.
People don’t like to admit that they didn’t vote. In one of its survey’s with the BLS, the Census Bureau asks whether people voted, and why they didn’t. This is done the month after the election. There are always more “voters” than the votes actually counted.
If a non-voter was called their possible responses would be:
(a) Click.
(b) “I usually vote, but this was simply too confusing.”
(c) “I voted, I always do. Piece of cake. I don’t know why anyone would say that instant mashed potatoes was complicated”
(d) “My dog ate my absentee ballot”.
The respondent would rank their responses:
(a), (c), (d), (b).
The pollster would eliminate the first choice. And go with someone who would respond.
In the 2013 Minneapolis election, those who voted a candidate as their first, second, and third preference; or only expressed only one preference; or voted for a candidate as their first and third preference, but someone else as a second preference; etc. was much more prevalent in precincts with higher number of racial and ethnic minorities.
Runoffs are simple and they work.
On Saturday, October 25, Louisiana held its election. A large majority of races had someone poll 50% or more of the vote and those candidates are all elected. In a smaller number of races, no one got 50% and the state will hold a runoff soon.
The only primaries Louisiana still has are presidential primaries. Otherwise it just has elections and runoffs.
@Jim Riley,
The reason I say parties could (note could not will) regain members is that voters, like myself, left the parties because by acquiescing to the extremes, they no longer represented us. People like to belong, it’s human nature. By eliminating the closed partisan primary where a small minority of a minority of total voters select nominees, the parties will have to leave the extremes and take positions that relate to a larger portion of voters. By doing so, they will represent the voters more and they may return to party membership. According to two studies in June, 2014, one by PEW and one by BPC, partisanship is the most divisive issue in the country, more than race, more than religion. This has to be corrected. Closed partisan primaries only maintain that division. Let’s see what happens in Maine, Duluth, MN, NY, MA, next year.
@Richard,
In Louisiana, the Fall Gubernatorial Election consists of the Oct. 24, 2015 primary and the Nov. 21, 2015 general.
I know you are old enough to know that ‘primary’ is an adjective meaning first (eg primary stage, secondary stage; primary school, secondary school). You’re not going to claim that a primary school is not a school, or that a primary stage is not a rocket. It is beyond me why you insist on believing that a primary election is not an election, or at least the first part of an election.
California permits local elections to be decided by the primary, there is no reason that they could not follow the example of Louisiana for other offices. And California should move the primary to later in the year.
Laissez les bon temps roulez, Ree-shard Oui’ng-air
@Doug Goodman
Most persons never belonged to a political party. They were registered to vote in a party’s primary. If there are no partisan primaries, people would stop registering with a party, or more likely the state would stop bothering to register voters.
I think you are looking at the process backwards. You want a particular result, and are trying to engineer the process to achieve that result.
Instead simply realize that individual voters have a right to choose who governs them. Someone who is an extremist (in your opinion) has every much as right to vote as you a moderate (in your opinion) do.
I keep asking Richard Winger, why if he likes a particular candidate, he can contribute money, put bumper stickers on his car, yard signs in his yard, tell all his friends and buttonhole strangers, hold a party and serve more than canapes, but it is illegal to actually vote for the candidate if he is of a different party.