On May 21, the South Dakota Secretary of State determined that the initiative to establish a top-two system in South Dakota has enough valid signatures. Proponents of the initiative call it an “open primary” proposal. But past U.S. Supreme Court decisions, and all political science textbooks that talk about political parties, define “open primary” as a system in which each party its own primary ballot and its own nominees, but on primary day any voter can choose any party’s primary ballot. Proponents of top-two systems believe that “open primary” is an appealing label, so they have bent it to their own purposes.
In top-two systems, there are no party nominees nor party primary ballots. Instead every candidate runs in June and then only the two who get the most votes may run in November. South Dakota is already one of five states that bans all write-in votes.
No top-two ballot measure has passed since 2010, when the California measure passed with 53.7% of the vote. Since then the idea has been defeated by the voters in Oregon twice, Arizona, South Dakota, and Florida. Proponents of top-two vastly outspent opponents in all those instances.
Partisan primaries that are restricted to voters of a single party would be better described as “Segregated Partisan Primaries”
Why describe them as something positive like segregation?
When Christian worshippers attend church on Sunday or Saturday, are they segregating themselves?
Yes.
NOOO PRIMARIES – PRODUCING EXTREMIST HACKS
ONE ELECTION DAY
EQUAL BALLOT ACCESS VIA EQUAL NOM PETS/FILING FEES
PR
APPV
TOTSOP
BAN ON WI VOTES = 14-2 AMDT SUBVERTED
MORE NON-VOTES ESP IF NOT 1 D AND 1 R ON BALLOTS IN GENL ELECTIONS IN RIGGED GERRYMANDER DISTS
IE MINORITY RULE IN CA UNDER 25 PERCENT IN CA ASSEMBLY [ STATE HOUSE OF REPS ]
MEDIA = TOO EVIL STUPID TO DETECT 1/2 X 1/2 = 1/4
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PR
Top One vs Too Zero is the real question.
Wisconsin banned voting?
No government run primaries. Standing count vote by party. Winning parties select officeholders by any means the choose, pay for, and administer, before or after the election. If parties want to choose officeholders before the election in case they win, same – however they want to go it, as long as they pay for and administer it themselves.
Too Zero? How do you too zero?
* Top One vs Top Zero
Stan’s idea sounds much better than some of the retarded plans seen here, such as replacement lists.
I borrowed it from a Russian guy. He said I can have it, he has more. As for replacements: winning party should be able to replace at will, with or without a vacancy, between elections, which should be every year.
Under the proposal, would each party retain the right to determine who may run under its label?
Under top two, no. Under standing count, the party has total control. If the party wins, it can change out officeholders like underwear. If it doesn’t win, it doesn’t have to pick candidates at all.
@WZ,
A candidate may select the name of a political party that appears next to their name. The same party name must appear on both primary and general election ballots. Each ballot must include a statement that the party name does not constitute or imply endorsement.
In South Dakota most House members are elected from two-member districts. The amendment provides for Top 4 in those cases.
The original proposal did call for “Open Primaries”. In South Dakota the Legislative Research Council reviews proposed initiatives and suggests alternative language. It might be possible to challenge an initiative as misleading. In this case the proponents accepted most of the proposed edits. See:
https://sdsos.gov/elections-voting/assets/2024CALRC1222CommentsJoeKirbyOpenPrimaries.pdf
It appears that they dropped a sentence that said political parties could not endorse candidates. They are of course free to support or endorse any candidate, just as anyone can.
The official ballot title is:
“An amendment to the South Dakota Constitution Establishing Top-Two Primary Elections.”
Freedom of association must include freedom of dissociation. Candidates should no more be able to draft parties than parties should be able to draft candidates. Freedom of association must be mutual, or party names become meaningless, especially for parties without the means to reach most voters.
@RW,
A person might attend multiple worship services in a day, week, or year. There are no state-recognized religions.
Why may someone make monetary or other contribution to any candidate, display yard signs or bumper stickers, attend rallies or block walk, but are legally forbidden from voting for that candidate at the most critical juncture where qualification for the general election is determined?
Those other activities don’t dilute the party members rights to control who gets to use their label.
@RW:
“Each ballot must include a statement that the party name does not constitute or imply endorsement.”
IMO, a party label SHOULD imply endorsement, and no candidate should run with a party label without that party’s express allowance. A party COULD choose to make multiple endorsements, or it COULD choose not to make ANY endorsement. That should be entirely up to the party, according to their own rules.
The party OWNS its own name.
Any candidate who seeks a party endorsement, but fails to get it, should be allowed to run as an independent, but NOT as a party candidate.
Exactly.
@SCS:
“Under standing count, the party has total control. If the party wins, it can change out officeholders”
How would independents run under such a system?
As their own party. There’s no minimum party size.
@SCS:
The Israeli Knesset has closed list party voting. Given that it’s a unicameral legislature, people can only vote for one party.
But, the US has a bicameral Congress. Should a US voter be allowed to split-ticket vote, and vote one party for the House, and a different party for the Senate?
Just one.
@SCS:
No, thanks. Voters should be able to vote for different parties for different offices.
I disagree. Voters should stand for their party. One party should get the responsibility for what goes right and what goes wrong in their watch.
Why would you vote for different parties for different office if you’re not voting for individuals? People should vote on the basis of ideas, not looks or personalities or personal attacks. Individual bureaucrats/politicians should be irrelevant. They can be switched out by the winning party several times a day if need be, that’s how little they should matter.
@WZ,
What constitutes this entity you refer to as a party?
Good point.
That was @ Ben
USA SENATE- POSSIBLE WORST MINORITY RULE IN A LEGISLATIVE BODY IN WESTERN CIVILIZATION
ABOUT 33 OF 50 STATES WITH BELOW AVERAGE SMALL POPS >>> UNDER 20 PCT MINORITY RULE
ESP ROTTED IF 1 PREZ YEAR AND 2 NON PREZ YEARS – IE NOW 2023-2024 — 2018-2020-2022
A party is a free association of individuals designed to compete in elections and, if successful, form a government.
Thank you for calling out this bizarre use of the term “open primary.” This is a proposal to cancel primaries.
The qualifying event is not an election, thus not primary. Elections are events which can elect someone.
@EDP,
If a convicted criminal is given a choice of prisons is that an open prison system.
Standing Count Stan makes the best points.
“Why would you vote for different parties for different office if you’re not voting for individuals?”
Why not? In Federalist 10, Madison suggests that the best way to avoid tyranny is to distribute power in such a way that it is practically impossible for any one party to control everything. Voters can assist this process by ticket splitting. Divided government best assures that checks and balances will be effective.
“People should vote on the basis of ideas, not looks or personalities ”
Don’t assume that everyone running under a party label has the same ideas.
Madison was wrong. It hasn’t worked. The real division should be between government and things that need to be kept out of its hands by limiting the electorate.
The system I propose would not have anyone running under a party label. It would have parties running, period. The responsibility of the winning party would include appointment of officeholders who put the party’s ideas into action. If any don’t, it would be the responsibility of the party to change them out, as many times and as often as needed to ensure they have zero personal input and 100% party input into how they govern.
The nice thing about those like Standing Count Stan, is that their rigor and dedication to being 100% wrong (not incorrect but anti-correct) 100% of the time, ensures you can never go wrong as long as you perfectly invert everything they say.
Backatcha, troll.
That would sound slightly less unconvincing if you hadn’t just said James Madison was wrong. But I’m sure you also consider him a troll…
No, but I don’t consider him infallible. He was born of a woman who was not a virgin. He made mistakes. I’m sure if he was here, he’d acknowledge he made mistakes. Maybe even that one.
If I’m wrong about everything, that would include the idea that most things which are currently in the hands of government should be taken out of its hands, and even the idea that government should be limited altogether. It was that statement which earned you the troll designation.
Okay, that’s fair. I stand corrected by the first example of you not being anti-correct I have ever seen: that government and its power should be limited if not entirely abolished.
Good, we have some basis of agreement. You still haven’t given any reason to believe I’m wrong besides your assertion that I am. Of course, you remain to do so at any time, and I remain optimistic that at some point you’ll take advantage of this freedom. Can we agree that Madison was sometimes wrong, even if we disagree that this was one of those times?
I am certainly willing to concede that Madison, being a mere human, as you rightly said, was not infallible and therefore probably made mistakes at some point in his life. However, I am not aware of any mistakes he made in any aspect of life, much less of flaws in his theories of governance and politics. (Unless of course I were to reckon his belief in the need for government to exist at all, as a mistake. In which case, that brings the total up to one, albeit a huge and glaring one.)
Highlights of anti-correct statements I believe you to have made previously are:
– that standing votes are less susceptible to manipulation of counts than properly secured in-person paper ballots or UOCAVA voting.
– that taking away the agency of voters to select individuals for office and restricting them to voting for a party that will appoint talking-heads to office instead, will improve representation, better protect rights or better serve the interests of the electorate in any other way.
– that the vote should be restricted to fathers with a military service record, i.e. exactly those jackboots who enforced the state’s will both through acts of violence and through supplying the state with a new generation of tools (which simultaneously serve to make the fathers more vulnerable to the state manipulation).
Ok, we agree on two things: government should be limited and Madison made mistakes. The rest appears to be you asserting without evidence that I’m wrong. The one thing approaching substance in that was your claim about veterans. That has not been my experience with the veteran community.
I resent your claims that I am “asserting without evidence” that you are wrong, that “the only thing approaching substance” regarded exclusive suffrage for jackboots, and your earlier claim that saying my “position is self evident or obvious does nothing to prove it or bolster it”; and object in the strongest terms to these mischaracterizations as being anti-correct themselves.
We are not discussing hard science, so there can be no providing or providing evidence, merely giving arguments, which I have done. Whether you find those arguments compelling or not is entirely a personal matter for everyone (though in my not-so-humble opinion, whether or not you do, reflects on both your intelligence and honesty, and as a result on how seriously you can be taken).
I will now also play the “backatcha” card and point out that I have yet to see any counter-argument, compelling or otherwise, from you or anyone else.
*proving or providing evidence
Resent anything you want. I’ve given reasons for everything I’ve said. Assertion is not argument. You have not made arguments. Arguments include reasons for believing whatever you believe. Your reason, as far as I can tell, is “because I said so.” Clearly, your opinion isn’t humble, that should go without saying.
I’ll agree that it reflects on my intelligence and honesty that I don’t find the fact that you asserted something compelling, although not in the way you apparently suggest it does.
As an example of providing evidence; once you have children, you are vested in the future. Wars and debt begin to matter in a way they didn’t before. The prospect of war is a much more serious matter once you’ve been on the front lines or a deployment order away, and especially when your kids are.
Arguments, not assertions:
https://ballot-access.org/2024/05/22/illinois-state-trial-court-grants-preliminary-injunction-in-republican-ballot-access-case/#comment-1223796
https://ballot-access.org/2024/05/22/illinois-state-trial-court-grants-preliminary-injunction-in-republican-ballot-access-case/#comment-1223801
https://ballot-access.org/2024/05/22/illinois-state-trial-court-grants-preliminary-injunction-in-republican-ballot-access-case/#comment-1223807
https://ballot-access.org/2024/05/22/illinois-state-trial-court-grants-preliminary-injunction-in-republican-ballot-access-case/#comment-1223808
https://ballot-access.org/2024/05/22/illinois-state-trial-court-grants-preliminary-injunction-in-republican-ballot-access-case/#comment-1223811
https://ballot-access.org/2024/05/22/illinois-state-trial-court-grants-preliminary-injunction-in-republican-ballot-access-case/#comment-1223812
https://ballot-access.org/2024/05/22/illinois-state-trial-court-grants-preliminary-injunction-in-republican-ballot-access-case/#comment-1223820
https://ballot-access.org/2024/05/22/illinois-state-trial-court-grants-preliminary-injunction-in-republican-ballot-access-case/#comment-1223825
https://ballot-access.org/2024/05/22/illinois-state-trial-court-grants-preliminary-injunction-in-republican-ballot-access-case/#comment-1223836
https://ballot-access.org/2024/05/21/top-two-initiative-qualifies-for-south-dakota-ballot/#comment-1223833
You just don’t find them compelling (Which is fine! It merely indicates that you are too disingenuous to be taken seriously – whether deliberately as a result of dishonesty, accidentally due to stupidity, or perhaps both).
The very first argument you present is immediately an argument against your own assertion: Having children and being vested in the future for their sake, makes you more of a slave to the state’s manipulation than ever before. Your increased susceptibility to blackmail and racketeering by the government makes you less qualified to vote, not more so.
You are actually making an argument for the case that parents should not be allowed to vote (with which I also don’t agree).
Not to mention that all post-Vietnam War and most post-Korea War American veterans and service men are jackboots second only to cops particularly feds. Under the last decades of leadership, the US has no longer been a country worth fighting for, but against. Jackboots should not be allowed to vote.
Discussion with you is pointless, since you believe that we’re living under the equivalent of Mao. No voting method would solve such a problem. I stand by all previous statements.
You did present an argument that time, but as a veteran, father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and retired law enforcement officer, I do not find it compelling. I’m sure you will call me a jackboot thug and other such names. I see it as serving my country, community, and neighbors, so we’re not going to agree.
I could call you that, yes. We could even have a whole mudslinging contest. But why not simply agree to disagree? We both stand by all our previous statements, which are all on record. If you find discussion with me pointless, let us just leave things here, while they are perhaps not amicable, but at least not quite openly hostile.
I thought that’s what I did. Or at least tried to.