The August 19 Newsday has this editorial, suggesting several changes to how candidates for partisan office are nominated in New York. Newsday is the largest daily newspaper in New York’s suburban counties on Long Island. The editorial recommends that voters be allowed to switch parties and make that switch effective quickly. Current law won’t let a voter switch parties except in the year before the change takes effect.

The editorial also calls on making it illegal for two parties to jointly nominate the same candidate, but the editorial writer (and many of the commenters) seem unaware that in 1912, the New York Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, interpreted the New York Constitution to protect the ability of two parties to nominate the same candidate.

The editorial also recommends easier ballot access for candidates to get on a primary ballot. The New York legislature has adjourned for the year, so any changes can’t be made until next year. Thanks to William Stevenson for the link.

Chris Henrichsen, the 2012 Democratic nominee for U.S. House in Wyoming, writes in this column on Patheos.com that he has registered to vote as a member of the Green Party. He now lives in Nevada. The Green Party is not currently ballot-qualified, but it will regain its place on the ballot if it can get its registration up to 9,738. The party believes it has approximately 4,000 registrants in Nevada, but the exact number is difficult to know because Clark County, the most populous county in the state by far, won’t release the data.

The party could also get back on the ballot if it submitted a petition of 9,738 valid signatures.

Henrichsen was unopposed for the Democratic congressional nomination in Wyoming in 2012. At the time he was a 35-year old political science instructor at Casper College. He is a member of the LDS church and campaigned in 2012 as a pro-life candidate. Thanks to Thomas MacMillan for the link.

On April 5, 2013, three political scientists published their own study of the effect of California’s top-two system, used for the first time in a regular election in 2012. The three authors are Thad Kousser of the University of California, Justin Phillips of Columbia, and Boris Shor of the University of Chicago. The paper can be read at this link, courtesy of the Social Science Resource Network.

The authors used survey research to determine the average political attitudes of the voters of each congressional district. Instead of just asking the voters if they are “liberal” or “conservative” or various other crude categories, it asked them their opinions about 46 political issues. Then the authors used the same data (which had already been gathered by Project Vote Smart) for all candidates for Congress in California, for both 2010 and 2012. The purpose of the study was to see if there was a greater fit between average political attitudes within each congressional district and the identity of the winner, or a lesser fit, or no change at all, between 2010 and 2012.

In 2010, California used a semi-closed primary, whereas in 2012 it used a top-two primary. The study determined that the top-two system did not result in a closer fit between the political attitudes of the average voter within a particular district, and the type of candidate elected in that district.

The study paid particular attention to congressional races in which two candidates from the same party were the only two candidates who appeared on the November ballot. The study concluded that the top-two primary has not halted the continuing partisan polarization of California’s elected members of Congress, and says if anything, polarization has increased and the quality of representation has declined. The paper explores ideas about why this has happened. The paper itself is 31 pages; the appendix lists the 46 policy questions that were answered both by congressional candidates and voters.