Kansas will probably hold a special election soon for U.S. House, to replace Congressman Mike Pompeo, who will resign from Congress to become director of the Central Intelligence Agency. This Wichita Eagle story says that Kansas has no procedure for qualified minor parties to participate in special elections. It also says independent candidates must collect approximately 17,000 signatures in 25 days.
The story seems to be in error. Kansas requires exactly 5,000 signatures for independent candidates for U.S. House, not 17,000. Also Kansas in in the Tenth Circuit, and the Tenth Circuit said in 1984 in Blomquist v Thomsen that when the normal petitioning period is shorter than usual, states must lower the required number of signatures. According to the news story, independent candidate Miranda Allen (who ran in this month’s regular election for this seat) would like to run again, but she apparently doesn’t realize that case law protects her.
A virtue of Top 2 is that all candidates and voters are treated equally.
Remember that in 1965, when Lyndon Baines Johnson resigned his Senate seat to become Vice-President, a minor party candidate was elected to replace him in a Top 2-style election to replace him in the Senate.
Jim… what? William A. Blakley (a Democrat) succeed Johnson by appointment and then John Tower (a Republican) was elected in a special election. Not to mention your dates are way off… Johnson was VP in 61. Humphrey became VP in 65 and was succeed by Mondale who was a Democrat.
Candidate and Incumbent rank order lists of replacements.
NO more HIGH cost – LOW turnout special elections for legislators.
That was 50 years ago Jim, back when the “spoiler theory” and “wasted vote” theory and other such fear devices didn’t have nearly as much of a grasp over the electorate as it does now, and the Fairness Doctrine was still law. These days, Top Two is death for third parties.
In Wisconsin we tried to seek administrative relief on those grounds in a special election and were denied. Alas Wisconsin is not in the 10th Circuit and so they said they were sticking to the statute in the absence of a directly binding court ruling.
@AMcCarrick,
You are correct, the special election was in 1961. Texas law requires a special election for a Senate vacancy to be held at the next uniform election date. There were four at the time, so the appointment was only for a short few months.
Candidates qualified for the special election without regard to party (Texas does not have permanent party affiliation). No candidate received a majority in the special election, so the Top 2 advanced to a runoff, which John Tower won.
And remember that an independent was elected to the Texas House in a special election earlier this year. It was also Top 2 style.
The Texas elections mentioned by Jim Riley were not “top-two elections.” The first round in both of those elections, and in all Texas special elections, was an election. Someone could have been elected in that first round.
By contrast, the first rounds in top-two systems in California and Washington are different, because the first round is never an election. The first round can’t elect anyone even if someone gets 100% of the vote. The first round in top-two systems is just a ballot access barrier, keeping all but two candidates out of the election itself. Jim understands this but he won’t ever speak of it.
There were 71 candidates on the ballot in 1961, how likely was it that one candidate would receive 50% of the vote? The special election in San Antonio also had two rounds?
Advocates of segregated partisan primaries are unwilling to accept that they have the effect (and likely the intent) of disenfranchising voters. If you want to support a candidate, you can make a financial contribution, you can display yard signs or bumper stickers, you can make speeches, but you can’t actually vote for a candidate who you would be qualified to vote for.
How absurd is that?
In California in 2003, there were 135 candidates on the ballot for Governor, but Arnold Schwarzenegger still got 48.58%, which is almost a majority. It does not follow logically or in reality that just having lots of candidates on the ballot means no one gets 50%.
There is nothing absurd about the principle that only members of an organization should have a voice in selecting that organization’s nominees. Do you think it is absurd that only members of an organization can help choose that organization’s leaders?
The primary process is for a party to figure out which candidate their members endorse. It’s not up to anyone except the Democrats to figure out who the Democratic nominee should be. Likewise, for every other party. The problem is that the primary process has become publicly funded for some parties, which amounts to nothing more than corporate welfare. Primaries should not be publicly funded.
Meanwhile, Instant Runoff Voting solves the 50%+1 problem in a race with more than 2 people without taking away a party’s ability to select its candidates or a party’s ability to have its candidates participate in the entire electoral cycle.
The way that California conducts recall elections discouraged Democratic challengers. Cruz Bustamante was reluctant to run a full out campaign, and Grey Davis was ineligible to run. On the Republican side, Darrell Issa decided not to run.
Had California run their recall election election like Wisconsin, where the recall election is just another special election, and used Top 2, the results would have been different, and there would likely have been a Top 2 runoff.
It is absurd to think that a government-organized and funded election is an activity of a private political club. It is absurd to grant special access to government activities to a private political club.
I have no objection to John Burton being head of the California Democratic Club (other than the extent that public-funded election of county committee members had an influence on his selection).
Divisions 6 and 7 of the California Elections Code are the true absurdities.
Ken Moellman,
You do realize that the purpose of Preferential Voting in Australian was to curb the power of the Labor Party, particularly when it was a much more left-wing organization.
If the Democratic Party were a private club, then it would be difficult for the government to determine who the Democratic Party was. And why should some private clubs have nomination rights?