On December 11, Better Ballot Arizona said it would not continue to attempt to put a top-five primary system on the November 2024 ballot.
However, a separate petition drive backed by Make Elections Fair Arizona will continue. That initiative would require that all candidates run on the same primary ballot and would authorize the legislature to pass some system as to how to determine which candidates get on the general election ballot.
Backers of that petition hope that if it gets on the ballot and passes, the legislature would be motivated to authorize ranked choice voting. They need 383,923 valid signatures by July 3. Supporters of this initiative believe that when a top-five or top-four measure qualifies, then opponents attack it by attacking ranked choice voting, so they hope to surmount this public relations problem by not specifically authorizing ranked choice voting. The group has raised $5,000,000.
If only a majority winner would be deemed elected and not face a subsequent round, the second initiative sounds like it would be a good idea. That’s literally the difference between the “primary” being a true election or a qualification event for an election. Elections elect people to offices; an event which always leads to a subsequent election and never, under any circumstances, can actually elect anyone to anything is not a real election.
Get that dead garbage initiative outta here, it’s stinking up the joint!
@Bottom,
What does it matter if it is not a “real” election?
It means exactly what it says,but without the quote marks. I already explained what would make it a real election and why it’s not. Which part are you having trouble understanding?
NOOO PRIMARIES
—-
BALLOT ACCESS – NOM PETS/FILING FEES
PR
APPV
TOTSOP
A single round election should be doable. All voting access, eligibility, vote counting, group status, qualifications for any of this, vote counting, and anything related to it should be confined to one evening per year, with everything related to any particular election taking place that evening and in person.
https://www.fec.gov/resources/cms-content/documents/2024pdates.pdf
FEC UPDATE 12-15-23
Ranked Choice Voting is good. Top 5 or Top 4 or Top 2 primaries are bad.
Ranked Choice elects communists.
Rotten communist voting and top x are bad.
https://media.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/files/202312958.pdf
MEADOWS – NO REMOVAL — 11 CIR CA OP
https://www.yahoo.com/news/worlds-most-powerful-militaries-2023-110100781.html
ENOUGH TO KILL A-L-L *LIFE* ON MOTHER EARTH X TIMES —
SOLVE FOR X.
https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2023/12/18/donald-trump-campaign-rhetoric-cnc-vpx.cnn
IS TRUMP HITLER’S NAZI DEVIL SON ???
Rabid commie voting makes vote counting more complicated, which makes it easier to cheat. It’s already to easy to cheat and commies steal too many elections such as US President 2020. We don’t need anything that makes cheating and fraud even easier. Retarded commie voting is bad.
CONDORCET = RCV DONE RIGHT — WITH APPV YES/NO TIE-BREAKER
ALL OFFICES
The most important issue is stopping and reversing the alien invasion which is poisoning our nation’s blood. We need to cleanse our country, and all White nations, of dark filth. Evil, sinister, dark forces are trying to snuff out the light by flooding is with a dark, evil mudslide of turd worlders. Rank chicken voting helps their evil plan by helping them steal elections and open up the floodgates at the border so our civilization drowns from mudslide.
Can Top-Whatever primaries solve the problem of the Democratic and Republican parties hogging all the power?
@Bottom Line
Are you talking about a runoff election? I think some states and some other nations do that already. But a Top-X Primary is not that. It’s just a vote for ballot access.
To be fair, the current primary / ballot access system in Arizona is pretty whack. Just search “Arizona Libertarian” on BAN.
@Hank,
Don Young was a commie.
@Bottom,
It is part of a series of events that determine an office holder.
Just because it does conform to your labeling standards does not make it illegitimate.
Submitting qualifying paperwork is also part of a series of event’s. That doesn’t make it in itself an election. It’s a qualifying event. So is any “election” which can not under any circumstances ELECT anyone.
That last thing is what, makes something an ELECTion.
The date to submit signatures is not an election . The date to start getting signatures is not an election. The filing of financial disclosures is not an election.
There are many events which determine an office holder. Campaign stops. Media interviews. Fundraisers. Internal strategy meetings. They are not elections.
“Primaries” which don’t elect anyone, ever, and couldn’t if they tried, are not elections. They are qualifying events, like picking up and submitting various required paperwork. They might winnow the field. But they are NOT elections.
It’s not that they are not legitimate elections. It’s that they are not elections at all, even if they are falsely called “primary elections.”
The only way they can be elections is of a majority winner is immediately ELECTED without any runoff. Otherwise, the runoff IS the election, and the preceding event is just a qualifying event, like filing paperwork.
Runoffs, another term that could mean different things.
Either the runoff automatically takes place, whether there is a majority winner or not, which is top X. In that case the “run off” is the only actual election, and the preceding qualifying event is more like a signature or other paperwork deadline which can be used to qualify or disqualify candidates from an election, but is not itself an election.
Or the runoff only happens if no candidate gets a majority, only a plurality. But if the majority winner is ELECTED RIGHT THEN AND THERE. Then and only then can both the first and second rounds both be called elections without twisting the meaning of the word.
If the second round may or may not happen, depending on the results of the first, that first or primary event is an election . Otherwise it is one of a series of qualifying events for an election. But not itself an election.
@BL,
Should the participants in a primary election be called voters?
Your question makes no sense, since there’s no such thing as a primary election. To be a primary election it would have to be an election. It’s not an election.
There could be a panel of judges or bureaucrats which holds a vote, as to whether the signatures or disclosures were adequate for inclusion in an election. Despite the fact that they voted, they are not the voters in an election, because what they voted in was not an election.
While different jurisdictions and types of elections handle this differently , for at least some of them there comes a period where any registered voter can sign to qualify a candidate for the election, and if enough registered or eligible voters sign, the candidate qualifies; if not, she doesn’t. Even when the set of potential signers is exactly the same as that of participants in the election, and each one of them can “elect” to sign a nomination or “permission to participate slip,” no one normally calls signatures gathering to qualify for an election an “election” itself. At least, I’ve never heard it called that. Have you?
In the Pacific northwest states, there are events which they call “outdoor conventions,” which look just like ballot access petitioning from the viewpoint of signature gatherers and those being asked to sign. You probably actually know more about them than I do. The “signers” of the “convention roster” can be anyone qualified or maybe registered to vote. These events are not normally called elections.
I think I’ve read that you yourself vote in Texas, and you may have been the one who explained here before that Texas ballot access signatures are in lieu of so called “voting” in a so called “primary election.” Even there, I’m not aware of anyone who calls signing ballot access or in lieu papers “voting in the primary” itself. This is true even though there is a deadline day to sign and “primary voting” has “early voting days.”
The set of people who can sign these nominations, in lieu papers, convention rosters, etc, etc, can be the same as the qualified voters in an election, or some subset thereof; whether they signed can be confidential, or not; a certain number of verified signatures is typically required; there’s a signature deadline day and a number of “early signing days” and yet these are not elections.
“Primary elections” resemble these events more than they do actual elections, other than being dressed up as elections. They’re either elections – events which can directly elect someone to office – or they aren’t.