Iowa State Senator Brad Zaun (R-Urbandale) has pre-introduced a bill to provide that when no one gets as much as 35% of the vote in a partisan primary, the government will hold a run-off primary. Iowa primaries are in June, so presumably a run-off primary would be in late July or early August.
Under current law, when no one gets as much as 35%, the party then chooses someone by convention. Zaun has been planning this bill for almost six months. See this story from July 2014 which explains why Zaun doesn’t like the current convention system. He ran in the Republican primary in 2014 for U.S. House, and placed first in the primary, but received less than 35%. At the convention two weeks later, he was defeated by the candidate who had placed fifth in the primary. That candidate, David Young, when then elected to the U.S. House in November. Zaun was in the middle of his four-year term as a State Senator in 2014, which is why he is still in the State Senate. All states that now use run-off primaries are in the South, and the number of states with run-off primaries has been gradually diminishing over the last fifty years. Thanks to Nathan Hetzel for this news.
Why not establish “Instant Run-off” or “Second Choice” like they used to have in many southern states? It saved dollars and it worked. There were no more corrupt elections in the South with the “Second Choice” process than there is today with the 1st and 2nd Primary Elections.
It’s strange these states have money for a “Run-Off” elections, but don’t have a small little space on their General Election Ballots (a space smaller than a square inch) for each candidate.
And if these ballots didn’t take up space for so many wordy constitutional amendments or public referendums, there would be plenty of space on any ballot.
Just another excuse by the major party politicians to keep us all off the ballot.
Why not Top 2? 58 of 100 House races, and 13 of 25 senate races only had candidates from one of the two major parties, and for 125 legislative races there were only 13 minor party or independent candidates.
Provide filing fees as the way to qualify for the ballot, xxx dollars for each candidate with no xxx dollars from any special interest group, and requirement that all candidates be allowed to appear in the debates under penalty of the law.
This would not only bring out more candidates at each election, but candidates who are not connected with the current political status would be offered to the public.
For example, Jeff Sessions was the only candidate on the ballot in 2014 for U.S. Senator for Alabama. Had I been allowed to have qualified by a filing fee of no more than $5000 dollars, and the federal government had guaranteed me 1 million dollars in campaign funds, and lastly, all media in the state would have been required under penalty of the law to give me equal coverage in news articles as well as being included in any public debate, thousands of more voters would have participated in the election.
These measures are what it is going to take to bring about free and open elections.