Hawaii held primaries on Saturday, August 11. All ballot-qualified parties in Hawaii must use the primary to nominate candidates. Hawaii has five parties: Democratic, Republican, Libertarian, Green, and Constitution. The Constitution Party didn’t have any candidates this year. Greens are running a gubernatorial candidate for the first time since 2006.
Independent candidates did well in the primary. Hawaii forces non-presidential independent candidates to run in the open primary, and they must outpoll a partisan winner, or else poll 10% of the total primary vote for their office, or they can’t be on the November ballot. All three independents for U.S. Senate outpolled the Libertarian. Also, both independent candidates for Governor outpolled the Green gubernatorial nominee. However, the law says that when more than one independent for a single office meets the primary vote test, only the highest vote-getting independent can appear on the general election ballot.
Here is a link to the unofficial returns.
NO primaries.
PR and AppV
I thought that the primary system made it so that if multiple non-partisans ran, the only way to qualify would involve the winner amassing more votes than a third party candidate.
For example, two NP candidates got more votes than the Free Energy candidate in the 2010 primary ( http://files.hawaii.gov/elections/files/results/2010/primary/histatewide.pdf ) but only the winner appeared on the ballot ( http://files.hawaii.gov/elections/files/results/2010/general/histatewide.pdf ). Unless the law changed in the last few years (which would create unintended problems with regards to Hawaii putting Gov/LG primary winners on the same ticket)
Although multiple NPs beating a third party candidate is still impressive considering that the multiple NPs pretty much serve to make it harder for any of them to qualify
Hawaii is one of the more communist Donkey states
— living off of the USA military bases in Hawaii and other Pacific Ocean places
State Senate has 24 gerrymander Donkeys (100 percent control) — ZERO Elephants (only such State)
Prez Nov 2016
128,847 Trump R
266,891 Clinton D
33,199 Others
428,937 Total
FEC, Fed Elections 2016
Of interest — the pct of blank and over votes for each office —
NOT done in most States — to help detect ballot box stuffing
— ie — more votes than voters.
I like their independent primary. Does any other state have that?
Reality check –
See the above 2016 math for Prez
Very good luck to ALL non-Donkeys.
Perhaps divine intervention via a major volcano blowing up or typhoon or super-earthquake on election day in HI may elect a non-Donkey ???
BH, you are correct and my original post was mistaken. I just re-read the law. I had never noticed before that only a single independent candidate can ever qualify for the November ballot. I think that is unconstitutional. Independents are not necessarily associated with each other; it isn’t like a political party. So this year we have a few independent candidates who aren’t allowed on the November ballot, just because of the accident that other independent candidates were also running. And the unlucky independents actually got more primary votes than some of the party nominees who will appear on the November ballot.
I see two independents out polling the Libertarian (and Green) for US House 1. No Libertarian US Senate candidate.
@WalterZiobro,
Independent candidates may run in Top 2 primaries in Washington, California, Louisiana, and in Nebraska (for the legislature).
A state could hold a blanket primary in which all candidates for each office would appear on the ballot. Each party could restrict its nomination process to voters of selected parties and/or independent voters.
A voter’s ballot would be marked with his party selection – or in states with anonymous affiliation this could be done by the voter. Even if a voter was affiliated with a party he could still vote outside the party.
When counting votes for nomination, only votes from voters permitted to participate in the nomination would be counted. There could be a threshold for a nominee to qualify for the general election.
Independent candidates and trailing candidates could qualify by reaching a threshold of support. Losing party candidates could voluntarily withdraw. The threshold might be 1% and finishing in the Top 10. The general election would require a majority for election, with a runoff if necessary.