The Atlanta Progressive News has this story about HB 58, which eases ballot access for independent and minor party candidates for U.S. House, legislature, and partisan county office.
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A local school board in New Mexico had the ultimate low turnout…three candidates were on the ballot, to fill three positions. No candidate received even one vote. Zero voters showed up. See this story. Thanks to Rick Hasen for the link.
The Institute of Governmental Studies, at U.C. Berkeley, publishes the California Journal of Politics & Policy. The latest issue, Volume 7, issue 1, 2015, has just been posted on-line and can be seen at this link. It contains six scholarly articles about California’s top-two system, and in addition contains commentary from eight individuals.
None of the scholarly studies mentions the impact of top-two on minor party and independent candidates. One of the commentaries, Darry Sragow’s “California’s Open Primary: Not an Open and Shut Case” does mention them, but merely asserts, “The open primary offers great promise for candidates who are something other than a Democrat or a Republican”, but Sragow provides no evidence. He suggests that the top-two system hasn’t helped minor party and independent candidates so far because they haven’t had enough money. He does not mention the fact that the independent candidate for Secretary of State in 2014, Dan Schnur, had significantly more campaign funds than the leading Republican in the race, Pete Peterson. Yet Peterson outpolled Schnur by 1,194,715 to 369,898. He also doesn’t mention the statistic that minor party candidates have run for federal and state office in a top-two system 118 times in which there were also two major party candidates running, and in all 118 instances, did not place first or second.
The commentary by Tony Quinn falsely asserts, “under the prior system, voters in a closed primary chose party nominees.” Actually, under the prior system, independent voters were told at the polling place that they were free to accept a Democratic or Republican primary ballot, in all congressional and state office primaries 2001-2010.
The commentary by Katie Merrill, “Is California’s Top Two Primary Bad for Women Candidates?” studies two particular races and makes the case that the answer is “yes”, but acknowledges that this is only an anecdotal approach.
The short commentary by Zabrae Valentine says that the top-two system might work better if the primary were in August instead of June.
Here is the Los Angeles Times story about the studies. The L.A. Times story reflects the fact that most of the scholarly articles (as opposed to most of the commentary) tends to suggest that top-two has not achieved beneficial results. Thanks to Blair Bobier for the link to the newspaper story.
Joe Brown, a former Tampa Tribune columnist, has this op-ed in that newspaper, advocating that write-in space on Florida ballots be abolished.
Write-ins in Florida are already severely restricted. No one can be a write-in candidate unless he or she files a declaration of write-in candidacy five months before the general election. Write-ins in primaries are not permitted.
Brown, and other Florida commentators, frequently express ire that write-in candidates appear to be responsible for closing certain primaries for partisan office that would otherwise be open to all registered voters. The Florida Constitution provides that when there are no candidates for a particular partisan office except members of just one party, then the primary for that particular office shall be open to all voters. But when a write-in candidate files for that office in the general election, then that constitutional provision doesn’t apply, and the primary for that office is closed.
Florida newspaper columnists and reporters consistently fail to grasp that the real problem in Florida is that so many partisan elections only have candidates from one particular party. This is because the Florida filing fees are so staggeringly high. If Florida had modest candidate filing fees, more people from different parties would file, and one-party elections would be far less likely. Florida filing fees are 6% of the office’s annual salary. Except for Georgia, which has 3% filing fees, no other state has filing fees in excess of 2% of the office annual salary.
The Supreme Court of British Columbia has ruled that the newspaper National Post defamed Andrew Weaver, a Green Party member of the British Columbia legislature. See this story.