On May 1, an Oregon Senate Committee passed SB 630. It provides that there would only be two candidates on the general election (for all partisan office except president). Supporters of the bill refer to this as “the open primary”, although political science textbooks and U.S. Supreme Court decisions call it the “top-two” primary (a classic open primary is one in which a voter is free, on primary election day, to choose any party’s primary ballot).
Supporters of the “top-two” system say they have commitments from 16 Senators to vote for the bill. The Oregon Senate has 30 Senators.
The “top two” is a nonpartisan general election with a runoff.
The Supreme Court certainly did not use the term “top two” in its 2000 ruling in California Democratic Party v. Jones. Richard Winger disagrees with me on this, but my view is that the “nonpartisan blanket primary” which Justice Scalia described in his majority opinion is the “top two.”
The popular name for Louisiana’s “top two” is also the “open primary,” which the failed 2004 California “top two” initiative was also popularly called.
In a classic open primary, a party’s primary ballot is available to any voter who requests it. In almost every state where one major party has an open primary, the other major party does, too. The exception is Utah, where only the Democratic primary is open.
In Alaska, the Democrats share their primary ballot with the three minor parties, and that ballot is available to any voter. Alaska Republicans, on the other hand, only invite independents to vote in their primary.
The rationale for this awful bill is that it will give more power to moderates. If the Republican Party’s primaries are so dominated by the extreme right, and the Democratic Party’s primaries are so dominated by the extreme left, then why don’t moderate independents form a Moderate Party?
They could get moderate Democrats and Republicans tired of losing out in the primaries to join their party. If the vast majority of voters are in the middle, then the Moderate Party would win most elections easily. They could control the levers of power without taking away any party’s right to appear on the ballot in November.
But why do all the work of building a party when SB 630 lets you have your cake and eat it too? It allows voters to never volunteer for a party, never give it a penny, and never even join it, but still control who wins the primaries.
Tom is absolutely right. There’s an incredible level of hostility to political parties among the chattering classes.
Actually, Tom, there are no primaries in the “top two,” despite its popularly being called a “primary.” The parties, to be sure, still have the right to endorse candidates, but the “top two” takes away the parties’ ability to officially nominate candidates.
If the parties cannot perform their basic function of nominating candidates, what do you need them for? Everyone might as well be an independent. A citizen certainly has the right to be an independent, but a citizen does not have the right to force his fellow citizens to be independents, and that’s essentially what the “top two” monstrosity does.
The notion that the “top two” engenders more moderation is laughable. The 1995 runoff for governor of Louisiana, e.g., featured a white conservative Republican and a black liberal Democrat.
When the “top two” vote-getters are from the same party: not only is that party split in the deciding election, but the other parties’ faithful voters are disenfrachised. It’s ironic that independents would favor the “top two”– which makes it nearly impossible for independents and small-party candidates to get elected.
The “top two” allows voters to choose among all the candidates in the first round, but it limits the voters to two choices in the final, deciding election.