A few Republican Party leaders have expressed the idea that somehow, the party should keep Donald Trump out of its upcoming presidential debates. This National Journal article explains that federal campaign finance laws do not permit that. Debate sponsors must use objective criteria, such as poll results, not political criteria. Thanks to the Center for Competitive Politics for the link.
This news story says Donald Trump was asked whether he would run for president outside the major parties. He said “no”, but not in an absolute sense.
Also, see this story. Trump’s comment that everyone who voted for Ross Perot in 1992 would have voted for George H. W. Bush if Perot had not been running is contradicted by 1992 exit polls. Those exit polls showed half of Perot’s voters would have voted for Bill Clinton if Perot had not been running, and the other half said they would vote for President Bush. Of course some of them would have voted for another candidate.
On a related note, this Public Policy Poll released on July 8 for the North Carolina Republican primary says Trump is leading. Thanks to PolitialWire for the link.
Will Leitch, an author and blogger who is more noted for his writing on sports, here comments on the Fox News rules for the August 6, 2015 Republican presidential debate. His piece is on Bloomberg Politics. Leitch writes, “Allowing pollsters and television networks to choose who gets to be a candidate long before any actual voter gets to see them is profoundly undemocratic in the purest way.”
Law Professor Vikram Amar has this article on Verdict, expressing the view that the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision Arizona State Legislature v Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission means that the National Popular Vote movement is free to use the initiative process to pass its plan. Thanks to Rick Hasen for the link.
The same logic also supports using the initiative to pass laws for each U.S. House district to elect its own elector, or laws to apportion each state’s electors in proportion to the popular vote within each state.
The United States House of Representatives has 435 voting members. In 291 of the districts (66.9% of the districts), independent voters can vote in all major party congressional primaries, without having to join any party. In another 20 districts, independent voters can vote in any major primary but they must join that party at the polls on primary day. In another 7 districts, independents can vote in Democratic primaries without joining the Democratic Party, but they can’t vote in Republican primaries.
States in which independent voters can’t vote in either major party’s congressional primary without joining a party have 137 districts out of the 435.
The reason this data is worth mentioning is that many proponents of top-two primaries repeatedly publish misinformation. For example, John Opdycke, President of OpenPrimaries, has this op-ed in The Hill of July 7. The op-ed says “most congressional representatives are elected via an electoral system that empowers the few and excludes the many.”
The op-ed also implies that “the vast majority” of voters are excluded from major party congressional primaries. Actually, 73.3% of U.S. voters in the states with registration by party are registered members of parties; 26.7% are registered as independents, or as members of unqualified parties.
Finally, the op-ed says the California top-two system caused an end to late budgets. Actually California’s legislature was able to pass state budgets on time after 2010 because in November 2010, California voters passed Proposition 25, which eliminated the requirement that the budget pass with a two-thirds vote in each house of the state legislature. Once that happened, it was easy for the Democratic majority in each house to pass the budget favored by the Democratic legislators. The top-two system had no impact on whether the budget passed on time.
