At 4 p.m., the Alaska House Judiciary Committee held a short hearing on HB 200, which imposes a top-two system. The hearing was supposed to start at 1 p.m., but it couldn’t start then because the House was unexpectedly in session in the afternoon.
Because there was so little time for a hearing, no one from the public was allowed to testify.
The sponsor, Representative Gabrielle Ledoux, said that four states have top-two and that it came about by the initiative process in all four states. This is not accurate. The California top-two idea was put on the ballot by the legislature. Louisiana does not have top-two; instead it has abolished primaries and only has general elections in November and sometimes a run-off after November; in any event Louisiana does not have the initiative process. Finally, Nebraska does not have a top-two system either. It has semi-closed primaries for congress, and state executive offices, and county partisan offices, and a completely non-partisan elections (with no party labels) for legislature.
Another hearing will be held on Wednesday, April 12, probably at 1 p.m.
When public testimony is allowed, individuals in several population centers may testify by video, even if they aren’t there in person in Juneau.
Louisiana statute refers to its October election as a primary, and the November election as a general election. The primary for the legislature in Nebraska advances the top two candidates to the general election.
What Representative Ledoux said was that because her bill was being considered by the legislature. there was an opportunity to vet the bill. Of course the Washington legislature passed the Top 2 bill. It was only after Gary Locke’s ill-advised veto, that the Grange went to the initiative process. While the California proposition was passed by the legislature, it would be inaccurate to claim that SB 6 had been vetted.
An interesting part of the bill is the procedure for pairing gubernatorial and lieutenant governor. Currently in Alaska, governor and lieutenant governor are independently nominated, but run as a ticket in the general election. The proposed bill would maintain the separate nominations, but would have the top gubernatorial candidate choose their running mate from between the two lieutenant governor nominees.
California, Washington, and Louisiana have independent elections for governor and lieutenant governor. Louisiana currently has a governor and lieutenant governor of opposite parties. Nebraska does not use Top 2 for state executive office. The governor and lieutenant governor are nominated separately, but run as a ticket in the general election.
Representative Ledoux is a member of the House majority caucus which is comprised of Democrats, Independents, and Republicans (most representatives were elected as Republicans).
Sometimes state legislators use political science terms when they write laws. For some years the Liberty Union Party was legally a “major party” in Vermont, but that doesn’t mean that any neutral informed observer would say that the Liberty Union Party was a major party in a realistic sense.
An “election” is an event at which someone may be elected. The November elections in Louisiana for Congress, and the odd year October elections in that state for state office, are “elections” because they elect people. The US Supreme Court agreed with this use of words in Foster v Love, which said Louisiana could not continue to elect people to congress in September, whether the election code called the September event a primary or not. To the US Supreme Court, the September congressional elections were elections and therefore they violated federal law which tells states to hold elections in November.
Louisiana was materially electing representatives in September/October, issuing certificates of election, and not operating polling places in November. Congress could change that statute, permitting states with an Open Primary in September in which all candidates and voters could participate to elect representatives and senators, to elect a majority winner.
I doubt if that statute were enacted that you would approve of Top 2.
You are well educated enough to know that “primary” is an adjective meaning first. A primary election is the first stage of a multi-stage election. Sometimes, in informal usage, the noun being modified is dropped, and we use the adjective as a noun.
We can distinguish different types of primary elections:
Top 2 nonpartisan primary elections: An election in which all candidates run, and all voters may vote for any candidate.
Partisan primary elections: An election in which voters affiliated with a party make nominations for their party.
Defects of partisan primary elections:
(1) Voters are segregated by party affiliation. A person may make a financial contribution to any candidate, may indicate support for any candidate with a bumper sticker or yard sign, may block walk and attend rallies for any candidate. Indeed, if they were legally forbidden to do so, it would clearly be a violation of your right to free speech. But when it comes to supporting a candidate in the most fundamental way, by putting an ‘X’ next to their name on a ballot you are prevented by official state action from doing so.
(2) Some voters may be prevented from voting in a partisan primary because of their expressed political beliefs.
(3) Ballot access barriers are erected. Independent candidates will have a different method of qualifying, often requiring collection of large numbers of signatures.