The State Secretary’s Election Division has posted the Primary election contests for Massachusetts on their website. While there has been a healthy uptick in partisan contests, perhaps to the point where Massachusetts won’t rank at the bottom for contested legislative elections in the US again this year, most Primary ballots are uncontested. With a majority of Massachusetts voters belonging to neither political party, but paying millions in the face of teacher, firefighter and police layoffs to fund an election process that is largely uncontested, it’s time we consider election reform. I have proposed that Massachusetts adopt an Open (or “Top Two”) Primary, where anyone can run regardless of political affiliation, and the top two vote-getters would square off in the General Election. The detailed proposal is here: http://danwinslow.com/2010/06/… I think it would encourage sorely needed political competition that would benefit our democratic process in the Commonwealth. Interested to hear what others think.
What’s this crap you have here Dan? This is not how a candidate for lowly state rep in some podunk district should spend his time. Unless he plans on losing.
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p>Anyone in your district care about this? Will they vote for state rep on this issue? Of course not. Why arent you out shaking hands and doing the grunt work. Of course you will say you are. But the fact that you found time to post this junk on a site like BMG shows severe misguidance as you attempt to get to Beacon Hill and show them how it’s done.
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p>This, btw, is an issue for after you get elected.
Knocking on doors, visibility events, meeting community groups and house parties in neighborhoods. But public policy matters. My priorities are private sector job creation, cutting waste and fraud to keep taxes low and spur the economy, and preserving core local services. All of which are impacted by a political system that lacks competition. Hence the proposal.
Strong advice for someone who doesn’t even have the strength of character to publish their real name. When you’re ready to run for state rep yourself, Ernie, let me know. I’ll be the first to max out. In the meantime, let people write what they want on BMG for Pete’s sake.
Unless you are a public figure, I see no inherent weakness in character in not posting one’s name. For one thing, posting under a pseudonym allows one to speak about personal issues without your neighbors finding out.
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p>I find it really low of you to call him out on this. If you think that posting under your real name is all that important, you should make it a rule for participation on this site. Until then, you should avoid criticizing people for not doing so.
This is the policy:
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p>Personally, as an assessment of character, I apply a sliding scale: the more intense an attack, the more I think the person should use their real name. Substantive issues-based criticism from anonymous whisperers from the shadows: grudgingly accept. Personal cavils from masked interlocutors: not so impressed.
Look at the time stamp, fer cryin’ out loud…the fact that he’s posting goo-goo stuff in the still watches of the night makes him a wonk after my own heart.
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p>(Even if I DO disagree with his idea to the point where I would prefer a closed primary to his proposal…)
Close the primaries and force the independents who are “above” party identification to choose a registration. This should infuse both parties with moderates and prevent running to the extremes for the primary then back to the center for the general.
Unenrolled voters can already vote in either party’s primaries, so it’s not as if independents are unrepresented. I’m not sure how having an open primary would create more partisan competition — and, in fact, it may create less competition in areas that lean pretty strongly in one partisan direction. If the two top vote-getters are Democrats, for example, then voters have no chance at all to vote for a Republican in the general election. With the primary system, at least you’re guaranteed the two-party choice if the parties have their act together enough to at least put someone up on the primary ballot. If the Republicans have failed to do that in many races, that’s a poor reflection on the Mass GOP, not on the primary system.
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p>The “top two” system also gives a big advantage to candidates with more money, particularly those who can buy enough visibility to finish in the top two. Party activists are probably less swayed by advertising alone, so the party primaries serve as a check on buying elections. If we had a full-fledged public financing system in Massachusetts, this would be less of a problem, but that’s not the case right now.
Potentially a real mess in the primary, unless you use IRV to select the Top 2.
Unicameral, non-partisan legislature. Join the Big 10. Why stop half way?
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p>Seriously, an interesting idea. But how – with a little evidence, if you can – does this:
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p>- increase competitive primaries
– encourage competition
– get independents more involved
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p>as opposed to our traditional partisan primaries?
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p>How hard is it to get on a partisan primary ballot around here? How hard is to qualify as an independent, and skip the primaries all together? This isn’t Maine, but we see independents run for statewide office, even some state rep races. Joe Moakley got elected to Congress the first time as an independent.
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p>Most municipal elections are this way, non-partisan top two primaries. Or just top one generals, without primaries. Are our municipal elections that much more competitive? More candidates running for office? Independents getting off their butts?
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p>I know this is popular down South, and now in California, but I don’t see that it’s done what you think it will do. Could be wrong, show me.
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Getting on the primary ballot has the same criteria as a person who runs unopposed – get signatures (150, 300, etc.).
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p>Independents run here too, but are ignored by media – Cahill is one example, but Peter White is running as an independent in the 10th Cong., and IIRC there are others in other districts as well.
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p>(Interesting Fact – Peter has been going to TEA Party meetings, where his Green, Fed-bashing, isolationist stance has been a big hit. Peter’s platform is that the two parties are two sides of the same corrupt coin. He’s been RUNNING on this premise for many years, but now he’s found a group that agrees with him.)
I hate primaries as much as anyone, but probably for my own reasons, not necessarily on principle. I know this just passed in CA through the initiative process, any result of which is immediately suspect (as is any tweaking of the process going on right now in this almost-completely-broken state), but I’m not versed in the actual pros and cons of the “Top Two” scheme. The opposition contended that it opens up the process even more to the candidate or party with the most money, and makes the election even less accessible to low-budget, grass-roots candidacies than the party primaries do; this is an argument I’m alert to, but let’s hear the whole case (separate from any one person’s campaigning, for example).
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p>Anyone?
I’d support easing the rules for getting a party the same kind of ballot-access as the ‘big two.’
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p>I’d also support requiring any political winner to have an actual majority of the population’s votes, via an instant runoff system, or a runoff system that requires the same number of polls in the runoff as in the election (to ensure that an election isn’t stolen like it just was in Arkansas).
and look at the mayor and city council that Boston has. I don’t see this as being any better, in fact, it insures that the government employees all vote for the incumbents and nothing ever EVER changes. We are stuck with the “ionic” mayor for life.
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p>Unless you want to add the “None of the above” option to the mix, this is no better than what we have now.
Top Two Runoffs lead to chaos. Primary example: French presidential race, 2002
The first round votes broke down: 19.88%, 16.86%, 16.18%, 6.84%, 5.72%, 5.33%, 5.25%, and a trickle of 4%, 3%, 2% and smaller candidates.
The problem was that the 2nd place candidate was an enthusiastic voting bloc of the crazy party, that the rest of the population wanted noting to do with so the second round went: 82.21%, 17.79%.
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p>If the point of an open primary is supposedly to give us more and better choices, then this is a miserable failure. Most of the choices in the first round were false choices, you don’t really get to vote for them, 63% of first round voters threw their vote away. And in the second round, it seems the people agreed they had pretty little choice at all, between the boring candidate and the crazy candidate.
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p>Note that part about throwing your vote away. Real election reform would be giving us rankings ballots so that if I don’t get my first choice I might get my second choice. We need to be able to express that on a ballot. And if you want to save money on elections, we could throw out primaries and just let everyone on the general election ballot this way. (And don’t use IRV, it was enacted and then two elections later repealed just north of us in Burlington, VT. It’s bad. Virtual Round Robin/Condorcet’s method is better.)