Ohio State Senator Louis W. Blessing III (R-Cincinnati) has introduced SB 395. Here is the text. It would eliminate party nominees for Ohio congressional elections and elections for state office. Instead, individuals would file for the primary, and the top three vote-getters would be the only names on the general election ballot. At the general election, each of the three candidates would be placed on the ballot three times. Each of the three pairs would be matched against each other. The winner would be the candidate who won at least two of the pairings. If none of the three won at least two of the pairings, the winner would be the candidate whose loss was the narrowest among the three pairings.
Like almost all of the top-two, top-three, or top-four proposals, SB 395 makes it more difficult for a party to obtain or keep qualified status. Currently a party stays on the ballot by polling either 3% for Governor, or 3% for President. The bill would eliminate the gubernatorial option. Therefore, only parties that poll 3% for president would be qualified. The only third parties that have polled 3% for president in the nation during the last hundred years are the American Independent Party in 1968, the Reform Party in 1996, and the Libertarian Party in 2016.
The bill provides that candidates could choose to be listed on the ballot with the name of a qualified party. But candidates who didn’t describe themselves in association with a non-qualified party could not have their preferred party name on the ballot.
In the Washington state litigation over the Top 2 primary, Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna successfully argued that a candidate’s party preference was a personal political expression and not an indication of political party endorsement. SCOTUS did not approve the Top 2 primary, but rather remanded the case to the federal district court to determine whether voters could distinguish the two. SOS Sam Reed crafted regulations that permitted the candidate to express their personal party preference which does not require a “qualified” political party.
Washington in effect created a limited forum for First Amendment political expression.
A state like California by restricting candidates to expressing a preference for a state-approved party is limiting candidates to expressing a preference for state approved orthodoxy. The 1st Amendment is to protect unpopular speech from government sanctions, not to impose government limits (e.g. “You can only yell Democratic or Republican at a political rally held in a theater”)
Ohio should limit candidates to a short (280 characters?) platform statement.
The bill would create a Condorcet election. There is no reason to limit it to a Top 3. Ohio could let any candidate who met some threshold in the primary to advance to the general election. It could even use an approval-like voting system, where a voter who expressed a vote for three candidates would be counted as 1/3 of a vote for each.
I had devised a Condorcet primary system for President. Let’s say that there are 20 candidates. They can be paired in 190 combinations. Each combination would face off in a single congressional district, with 19 match-ups scheduled two per week over 10 weeks. The two candidates would go to a single congressional district and hold a debate, and then voters would vote for their preference. Candidates would be ranked in a league table just like you see in the Sports pages. The Top 10 would advance to a second round held in a similar fashion and so on.
Does this still allow Bill Redpath to throw his opponent off the ballot?
Lol, you are free to read the bill and figure it out. But it is rather burdensome to read bills that are that long.
Perhaps not. Redpath’s challenge claimed that some of the signatures were gathered by “Republicans” from Florida. In an open primary like is being proposed it does not make sense to limit signers (or circulators) to a single party. One of the circulators was a convicted felon including election forgery. That could be a valid reason for disqualifying signatures. The fourth circulator did not provide a valid address. That might or not be reason for disqualification.
NOOO PRIMARIES — NOW FULL OF EXTREMISTS
PR- LEGIS – VOTE FOR 1 — CANDIDATE RCV LISTS OF OTHER CANDIDATES – FOR SURPLUS VOTES DOWN / LOSER VOTES UP —
ALL VOTES COUNT
APPV – NONPARTISAN EXECS/JUDICS
TOTAL SOP
Don’t you see the hypocrisy of Redpath by claiming to be a champion of ballot access then has his opponent thrown off the ballot? Winger and Redpath continue to evade the question.
There is a difference between a general election, and a party primary. Bill’s opponent for the Libertarian nomination was not a real Libertarian. He was the creature of the Republican Party. If he had won the Libertarian primary, he probably would have withdrawn and left the party with no nominee for US Senate. My attitude is that states ought to let small parties nominate by convention, to protect themselves. Also it should be noted that Bill himself did not challenge his Libertarian opponent; other Libertarians did that.
Chase Oliver is not a real libertarian either, he’s a communist. You never challenged his nomination to my knowledge. If a Democrat pretended to be a Republican and did this, would you complain?
How do we know Redpath didn’t tell others to challenge for him? You’re just covering his ass. We see you are a phony and a hypocrite.
So Winger supports different rules for different parties. Got it.
@Winger is a hypocrite… So why do you waste your time here and associate with somebody you seemingly hate? Not to mention you’re straw manning hard; nothing in this thread or post has anything to do with Oliver. Stay on topic.
@Winger is a hypocrite…. But since he was brought up, please tell me where Oliver runs afoul of the Libertarian Party platform?
Aiden is another alias of known troll Robert K Stock.
Chase Oliver is for mask and vaccine mandates and sex changes for little kids. Not libertarian.
@Chase Oliver’s dildo…. You’re misrepresenting his positions, mostly likely purposefully so you can engage in these straw men arguments.
Leaving medical decisions to parents and doctors is not supporting sex changes (puberty blockers are not sex changes, they just prohibit the release of hormones that cause bodily changes during puberty; if you stop taking them then those hormones are produced and puberty resumes as it otherwise would). In fact, telling people how to parent (which is what you’re advocating for) is an infringement of parental rights and bodily autonomy, which for a minor rests solely with the parent. If you think parents are forcing their kids to get sex changes against their will, then maybe you should favor legal autonomy at younger ages (say more in line with physical maturity; stage 5 on the Tanner scale). If you want the state to step in to prevent parents from making decisions, then you don’t believe that children belong to their parents, but to the state. At that point you sound little different from the woman who was fired from MSNBC years ago for causing an uproar over her saying that (paraphrasing) “children don’t belong to their parents, they belong to all of us.” “All of us” is the state/government.
I don’t recall him stating that he supports any mandate, do you have a video clip or at the very least a verifiable written statement like an interview? You’re making accusations that you’re not sourcing.
“Aiden” (Stock) is obviously a communist Chase Oliver fanboy.
@AZ,
In California 191 candidates are running for the Assembly. Under your scheme each of these 191 candidates would have to rank their other 190 candidates? Would a voter have to choose among these 191 candidates? How would a voter determine which candidate or candidates his vote was counted for?
@Stop Trolling… Firstly, thanks for the ad hominem attack. And secondly, thanks for completely ignoring my questions and request for information. You’re dodging because you can provide no evidence for your claims. All you’re doing is proving your lack of intelligence and/or reading comprehension.
Anyway, back to the shadows I go for a while, as I have 4 daughters to take care of; including 2 newborns.
“Aiden” (Stock) got caught by the Motel 6 boss not mopping the floors.
@Stop trolling… Aww, butt hurt whiny bitch loser thinks he’s being clever. If you must know I work from home as a computer programmer. Yesterday, two of my three GFs (yeah, I’m in a poly relationship) had off from work, so they took the kids for the day to give me a day off. Normally only one of them is home with me during the day.
Waiting for Stock’s other personality “Taran” to chime in.
I have a rich fantasy life, for sure.
Cute; as they say, impersonation is the sincerest form of flattery.
I am really Robert K Stock. I admit it. I am sorry for trolling.
What me to sue you? I’ll literally get my lawyer to send a letter to Richard to get you IP, and then a court order to get your address from your ISP.
This is another thread that got retarded in a hurry.
Six months ago, Robert Stock told me to block his computer from making any comments here. I did so. Anyone who continues to claim that some poster is really Robert Stock is mistaken.
Because people can’t use a different computer or different name. It’s clearly Stock.
Who is Aiden threatening to sue and how will her lawyer get a VPN company in some other country to get her a physical address that was never associated with the burner phone from which someone else who may or may not be named Aiden or AI-den or Alden etc may be posting?
Using different phones and VPNs to post is very easy. IP addresses don’t really tell you a whole lot these days. Major mobile carriers generally use floating IPs that get shared over an area network.
Alden is issuing empty threats because she can’t stand being made fun of. She couldn’t even keep up the pretense that she was flattered for a couple of hours before getting obviously butt hurt.
Block his computer? Don’t you mean phone? I don’t know anyone under the age of 80 who uses a computer like it’s 1985, unless maybe if they’re goofing off from work instead of doing their job…
speaking of which, whatever happened to Alden going back to the shadows because supposedly she’s so busy with work from home, a harem of girlfriends, home day care, etc?
Suddenly she has time for multiple comments and possibly lawsuits over “impersonating” someone posting under only a first name (good luck with that).
Tom Knapp is the only person here who constantly claims under various fake names that all sorts of other people are Robert Stock.
This is because Tom was molested as a young child by an older cousin named Bob. Ever since then he has been obsessed with guys named Robert or Bob. His multiple personality disorder and delusions are made worse because instead of taking his psychiatric medication or going to therapy he self-medicates with LSD and PCP.
Additionally, he has never taken off or changed his underwear since that childhood trauma occurred.
Now, he constantly fantasizes that people who remind him of his cousin Bob, whom he has come to identify with Robert Stock, in some way are Robert Stock. That includes anyone calling put his delusions as such.
Tom plays these same kind of games on his own blog comments and then comes here trying to promote his blog because he desperately craves attention but hasn’t done enough to earn it.
I think A1den means she has three grandfathers, one of whom watched her and the other children during the day.
A porn parody of this site’s comments would be retard fetish porn.
Arden James, three grandfathers? How is that possible? Also, don’t you mean watches, rather than watched? If her grandfather isn’t watching her and the other kids during the day now, who is watching them? Does child protective services need to be notified?
Three or more grandfathers is very possible these days with all the homosexuals adopting children, divorces and remarriages, etc.
And yes, I mean watches in the present tense. Thank you for the correction. I don’t think there is any need to involve child protective services, lawyers, judges, etc.
STOCK! A GUEST THREW UP IN THE ELEVATOR. CLEAN IT UP!
Stock is retired. You need help. Also, aren’t you Tom Knapp? He has trouble coming up with $600, so how can he be a motel boss? Can you really spend so much on LSD and PCP that you are broke on a boss’s salary?
I have seven imaginary girlfriends, not all of whom are AI. Together, we have several dozen children.
I also work from home as an emergency trauma neurosurgeon. I have performed several pioneering brain surgeries from home on patients including myself.
Next, I’m going to revolutionize the field of law, much as I did brain surgery, by successfully suing anyone who posts under a name vaguely resembling my own.
With all the money I’ll make with these lawsuits I will then become a rocket scientist and an astronaut. I will lead the colonization of Mars. Elon Musk can eat my dust.
I’m not actually Tom Knapp. As hard as you might find it to believe, I am actually your father.
I am dating Rosie Palms and five of her sisters, as well as my bed, living room couch, and various other pieces of furniture. We have so many kids we’ve lost count of them.
It is not widely known that I am also Satoshi Nakomoto.
As you might imagine, I’m a huge winner. You are incredibly lucky that I had any time at all for you losers. It’s not likely to happen again any time soon.
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that I fight crime at night as a masked vigilante. Criminals all over my city fear even the sound of my name. Lawyers love to hear from me though. I keep them really busy, but the huge settlements we collect on a regular basis make all the hard work worthwhile for them.
I’m not going to post here again for a really, really long time.
Is Aiden actually Robert Stock or Tom Knapp?
Why are you gay?
Aiden is Aiden James. The person who keeps calling everyone and their brother Robert Stock is Tom Knapp. You are gay because you enjoy the way that penises feel in your anus and throat and you like how they taste. It may also be because you were molested as a small boy. Robert Stock is retireded.
That first name sounds a lot like mine. You did not ask me for permission to use it. You will be hearing from my attorney.