On August 27, the Arkansas Supreme Court ruled that the initiative to establish a top-four system should not appear on the ballot. The same decision also removed an initiative to set up a nonpartisan redistricting commission. Arkansas Voters First and Open Primaries Arkansas v Thurston, cv-20-454.
The initiative proponents were required to certify that they had checked the criminal record of all paid circulators and that they all were free of having a criminal record. Instead, they certified that they had checked the criminal records, but made a technical error and didn’t say what the results of the background checks were. This is a very abstruse reason to reject any petition. The vote was 6-1. Here is the decision.
The top-four system would have ended the ability of parties to have nominees for office other than president. One result would have been to make it more difficult for a qualified party to remain on the ballot. If the measure had been on the ballot and had passed, the only way a party could remain on the ballot would be polling 3% for president. This is a severe test. In the last 100 years, the only parties, other than the Democratic and Republican Parties, which have polled at least 3% for president in the nation have been the Progressive Party of 1924, the American Party (also called American Independent Party) of 1968, the Reform Party of 1996, and the Libertarian Party in 2016.
You mean to tell me that if an ex-con is trying to make a living circulating petitions it’s illegal in Arkansas?
Poetic justice.
Not all ex-cons are barred. Only person convicted of certain crimes are barred. As I recall, they must have be sex offenders.
Only sex offenders are barred? Not criminal fraud? Is this any issue in any other state?
I thought there were more criminal offenses than that that bar felons from gathering signatures on initiative and referendum petitions in Arkansas.
You may be confusing AR with South Dakota, which band sex offenders.
Arizona bans people with any felonies from gathering signatures on petitions to place issues issues or candidates on the ballot.
Traitors ???
Murderers ???
Kid-nappers ???
Home invaders ???
14-2 permanent NON-Voters with zero civil rights – esp 1 Amdt *rights* ???
What State is THE ARSE-**** State with THE Stone Age worst politics ??? AR ???
I don’t understand all the hate for top-four systems among third party activists (especially since this top-four proposal is paired with ranked choice voting). Are third party activists involved in politics because they have a fetish for seeing their name appear on a November ballot, or are they involved in politics because they actually want to win office and make policy change? Yes, this will result in less third-Party candidates showing up on the November ballot. But for those candidates that do make it to the November ballot, T4/IRV significantly increases the chance of a third party candidate winning. If you don’t have the support necessary to make it to forth place in the preliminary round, you don’t have the support to win anyway.
If you have ranked choice or approval voting, it doesn’t matter how many names appear on the general election ballot. Why limit voters’ choices on the day most of them show up?
Walter, good point, and if I was in charge of drafting the language for the referendum, I would have done a few things differently. But you take what you can get. If I walked into my voting booth and saw this referendum and was deciding between yes/no, I would have voted yes since it is a huge step in the right direction. Seems nuts that third party activists are celebrating the downfall of the referendum.
“Why limit voters’ choices on the day most of them show up?”
I’d be curious if there’s been any research on this, but my gut feeling is that third parties would do better in low turnout elections because most sporadic voters are Dem/Rep drones. So if I’m right about that, third parties punch above their weight in the “preliminary round” of top-two/four systems.
NOOO extremist party hack caucuses, primaries and conventions.
ONE voter nom pet forms.
ONE election day. ALL mail ballots.
PR – legis and AppV NONPARTISAN exec/judic — pending Condorcet.
They should use Top-N where N is the smallest integer such that the Top N candidates receive N/(N+1) of the votes or more (if N is 1, the condition is more than 1/2).
Adjustments. After N is established, that becomes the qualification threshold. Other candidates are eliminated one by one beginning with the least votes. These candidates may transfer their vote totals to other continuing candidates. Any candidate receives the qualifying threshold or more will advance to the next round.
After the qualifying candidates are determined, any candidate but the first placed candidate before transfers may withdraw.
If a congressional race, at least two candidates must advance pending congressional action.
Repeat as many rounds as necessary.
For presidential elections, both presidential and putative vice-presidential candidates would appear on the ballot. Each candidate can designate his VP and slate of electors. Thus a voter might vote for Trump-Pence or Pence-Trump.
Write-ins permitted on each round, but no previously eliminated candidate may be written in.