On March 22, the New York Times printed this op-ed, in favor of “top-two” primary systems, written by former Oregon Secretary of State Phil Keisling.

On March 27, the Times published three letters opposing “top-two”, which can be seen at this link. The three letters that are critical of the idea are from (1) Eric S. Maskin, a Nobel Laureate in Economics; (2) Linda Williams, chair of the Oregon Independent Party; (3) Rob Richie, chair of Fairvote. The Times, on the same day, carries two letters commenting on Thomas Friedman’s March 24 column in favor of Instant Runoff voting. Those two letters are from David A. Holtzman and Theresa Amato. The Amato letter mentions the need for ballot access reform.

Seth Masket is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Denver. He has studied partisanship and polarization in state legislatures, and he understands the harm that extreme partisanship can do. He is the author of a 2009 book, “No Middle Ground: How Informal Party Organizations Control Nominations and Polarize Legislatures.” See this description of the book.

However, he doubts that California’s Proposition 14 will cure polarization in the California legislature. His blog, http://enikrising.blogspot.com, discusses the issue. Here is a link to his blog post about polarization.

On March 25, briefs were filed in the U.S. Supreme Court in Doe v Reed on the side of making petition signers’ names and addresses available to the public. The state’s brief is here. The brief of the Washington Coalition for Open Government is here. The brief of Washington Families Standing Together is here.

The brief of Washington Families Standing Together emphasizes that the names and addresses should be released to the public in order to prevent fraudulent signatures from slipping through. However, the people who filed this lawsuit have never suggested that people who want to double-check the work of elections officials should not be allowed to see the petitions. The people who filed Doe v Reed are merely trying to stop the names and addresses of all the signers from being posted to an internet site.

Washington Families Standing Together also denies that harassment of petition signers has been a problem. The group seems to have no awareness that people who have signed petitions in the past for controversial parties and candidates have been subject to being fired from their jobs. This was particularly true for people who signed petitions for the Communist Party in 1940, and for Henry Wallace in 1948.

Washington Families Standing Together’s brief also repeats the idea that signatures are obtained in public. This point ignores the other side’s briefs, which have already established that there are many methods to collect signatures, other than in public places.

The brief for the Washington Coalition for Open Government denies that the U.S. Constitution protects the secret ballot, although it admits that the Washington Constitution explicitly protects the secret ballot.

Amici briefs on the side of the Washington state government are due next week. The hearing is April 28, 2010.