Maine holds its primaries on June 12. The state is using ranked choice voting, and also voters will vote on a referendum on whether to keep ranked choice voting. Here is a New York Times story about the campaign for an against the referendum.
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Ted Rall, an author and editorial cartoonist, has this opinion piece defending political parties and partisanship, and criticizing top-two systems. Some of his points have support in the political science research conducted by Samara Klar and Yanna Krupnikov, set forth in their 2016 book, “Independent Politics.” They find that most people who say they are independent voters are really strongly committed to either the Democratic Party or the Republican Party, but they sense that nowadays, identifying oneself as a partisan is socially disadvantgeous, so they say they are independents. Thanks to several people for the link to the Rall column.
On June 8, the Minnesota Secretary of State approved the Libertarian Party’s gubernatorial petition. The Secretary of State is still checking the petitions for the Green Party, the Independence Party, the Grassroots-Legalize Cannabis Party, and the Legal Marijuana Now Party.
The Libertarian Party is now either a qualified party, or on the ballot for statewide office this year even though it is not a qualified party, in 42 states and the District of Columbia. It is working on Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. It will soon start in New York. It won’t be on for statewide office, nor is it a qualified party, in Alabama and Washington. It is not known if it will have any statewide candidates on in Rhode Island. Thanks to Oliver Steinberg for the information about Minnesota.
On June 11, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its opinion in Husted v A. Philip Randolph Institute, 16-980. The decision says that Ohio’s method for purging voters does not violate the federal law on voter registration. Here is the decision. The vote is 5-4.
On June 5, San Francisco held a special election for Mayor, using ranked choice voting. The San Francisco Chronicle, and former Mayor Willie Brown, have been opposed to ranked choice voting for over a decade.
Here is an opinion piece by David Campos, chair of the San Francisco Democratic Party and a former supervisor, defending San Francisco’s ranked choice voting.
Here is the lead story for Sunday, June 10, in the San Francisco Chronicle. Even though it is a news story, it contains an attack on ranked choice voting.
Here is Willie Brown’s column in the June 10 Chronicle, attacking ranked choice voting. Scroll down.
The June 10 Chronicle also has an editorial in support of the top-two system. The main point is that without the top-two system, Congressmen Ro Khanna and Eric Swalwell would never have been elected, because although they are Democrats, they are not liberal enough to have won a Democratic primary, yet they could win in a top-two system. But the editorial fails to note that either or both of them might have been elected as independent candidates, under the old semi-closed primary that was in effect before top-two began. Californians elected Quentin Kopp to the State Senate as an independent in 1986, 1990, and 1994; they elected Lucy Killea to the State Senate as an independent in 1992; and they elected a Green, Audie Bock, to the Assembly in 1999.
For many months, the Chronicle has refused all op-ed submissions that are critical of top-two, including a submission that points out that California could return to the blanket primary, or that it is free to switch to an open primary, or a semi-closed primary, if it wants to expand voter choice in November but retain the ability of independents to vote in primaries.