In 2015, Jane Miller, a former Republican nominee for public office and a registered Republican, was expelled from the Republican Party. She therefore was unable to vote in the closed Republican presidential primary in early 2016. She filed a federal lawsuit in April 2016 charging that the Republican Party violated her rights. However, on March 29, 2017, U.S. District Court Judge Alvin Thompson, a Clinton appointee, ruled against her. Miller v Dunkerton, 3:16cv-174.

The federal court ruled mostly on procedural grounds, arguing that her state court case (which she had lost) prevents the federal court from re-litigating the matter. Miller had been expelled because she had temporarily changed her affiliation to “independent” in order to be nominated by the local Democratic Party for a local partisan office. She did not win that election, and after it was over re-registered Republican, but then her new Republican registration was cancelled. Connecticut state law permits parties to block people from registering if they are deemed to be insincere. New York has a similar law. Last year, though, she was readmitted to the Republican Party.

Political scientists Eric McGhee and Boris Shor have published “Has the Top Two Primary Elected More Moderates?” Anyone may read the 36-page paper at this link. The authors studied California and Washington, which are the only two states that use top-two (as they explain on page 6 and 16, Louisiana and Nebraska don’t have top-two systems).

They conclude that since top-two started in each state, California Democrats in the legislature have become more moderate, but California and Washington Republicans and Democrats in Congress have not; nor have Republicans in the legislatures of either state moderated. The paper suggests that a strong reason why California Democrats in the legislature have moderated is because of three other changes made almost simultaneously: (1) redistricting reform; (2) term limits were eased; (3) the California budget no longer takes a two-thirds majority in each house of the legislature. But the paper believes that top two has probably had some moderating effect on California legislative Democrats.

Page 27 says, “The results of these analyses suggest virtually no effect of the Top Two in Washington or for Republicans in California.” That page also says that because members of congress are not subject to term limits, whereas members of the California legislature are subject to term limits, therefore term limits is probably the main reason why the results are different for California Democratic legislators, versus California Democratic members of the U.S. House. Thanks to Rick Hasen for the link.

South Dakota supporters of top-two systems will try to qualify an initiative in 2018 for their system. See this story.

The story is erroneous when it says that Louisiana has a top-two system. Louisiana had a top-two system from 1975 through 1997, but after the Louisiana version of top-two was declared to violate federal law (in the US Supreme Court decision Foster v Love), Louisiana abolished primaries and only has general elections in November (for Congress) and a run-off in December if no one gets 50%. Thanks to Mike Drucker for this news.