Nonpartisan blanket primary: Difference between revisions

Washington, along with California and Alaska, had a blanket primary system that allowed every voter to choose a candidate of any party for each position. That kind of system was ruled unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court in California Democratic Party v. Jones (2000) because it forced political parties to endorse candidates against their will.^[3]

The Washington State Legislature passed a new primary system in 2004, which would have created a nonpartisan blanket, or top-two, primary system. It provided an open primary as a backup, giving the governor the option to choose. Although Secretary of State

Under Proposition 14, statewide and congressional candidates in California, regardless of party preference, participate in the nonpartisan blanket primary. However, a candidate must prefer the major party on the ballot that they are registered in. After the June primary election, the top two candidates advance to the November general election. That does not affect the presidential primary, local offices, or non-partisan offices such as judges and the Superintendent of Public Instruction.[11] The California Secretary of State now calls the system a "Top-Two Primary".^[12]

In federal elections

The 2012 general election was the first non-special election in California to use the nonpartisan blanket primary system established by

In this race a three-way primary led to a two-way race between two members of the same party (Republicans) in the general election. With over 20% of the population voting for the Democrat and neither Republican winning close to a majority in the primary, both of the Republican candidates had to appeal to Democrats and other voters who did not support them in the first round. For example, incumbent Norm Johnson came out in favor of same-sex civil unions, moving to the left of challenger Michele Strobel, who opposed them.^[16]

Washington state legislature, 2010 38th District State Senate

First Ballot August 17, 2010^[17]

In this heavily Democratic district, Berkey was officially nominated by the 38th District Democratic Central Committee,^[19] but Democratic challenger Nick Harper bankrolled ads for the Republican candidate in an effort to "Squeeze the Middle" and prevent the moderate incumbent Berkey from running in the general election.^[20][21] When Berkey placed third in the primary by a margin of 122 votes, the Moxie Media scandal ensued: the state's election watchdog committee unanimously voted to refer the case to the state Attorney General Rob McKenna, who within hours "filed suit, alleging multiple campaign-finance violations."^[20] Despite a call several former state senators to hold another election, the election results were upheld and Berkey was prevented from running in the general election.^[20][21] Harper easily won the subsequent uncompetitive runoff election.

Washington state US Senate race, 2010

First Ballot, August 17, 2010 (only top three votegetters listed)^[22]

In this race, the three leading candidates' competition resulted in a more moderate and popular Republican facing off against the incumbent Democrat, with a relatively close general election.

The nonpartisan aspect means that political parties cannot control which candidates are allowed to use the party name. Partisan primaries allow for one candidate from each party to advance to the general election; no other candidate may use the party name in their campaign.

Political Science Professor Todd Donovan published an article in 2012 for the California Journal of Politics & Policy called “The Top Two Primary: What Can California Learn from Washington?”^[26][27] Donovan was the only expert witness in favor of the top-two idea,^[28] for the as applied court challenge of Top-Two. His academic paper states, “The partisan structure of Washington’s legislature appears unaltered by the new primary system.” Donovan concluded, “The aggregate of all this did not add up to a legislature that looked different or functioned differently from the legislature elected under a partisan primary."

In Washington State, major parties have resorted to an alternate process of party nomination for partisan legislative and county administrative positions.^[29] This ensures that one official party candidate will be in the primary, theoretically reducing the risk of intra-party vote splits. However, the law does not allow nominations or endorsements by interest groups, political action committees, political parties, labor unions, editorial boards, or other private organizations to be printed on the ballot.^[30]

The indication of party preference as opposed to party affiliation opens the door for candidates to misrepresent their leanings or otherwise confuse voters. In 2008, a Washington gubernatorial candidate indicated party preference as "G.O.P." instead of Republican. A public poll found that 25% of the public did not know that the two terms mean the same thing.^[31]

Further research on California's 2012 jungle primaries suggests that a jungle primary does not tend to lead to large amounts of crossover votes.^[32] Most voters who crossed over did so for strategic reasons. Furthermore, there seems to be evidence that having the top 2 candidates from the same party could lead to a drop in voter participation in the second round.

With regards to reducing political polarisation, this does not seem to hold true. Due to lack of crossover votes, an extreme candidate from the majority party can still win over a moderate from the other party.^{[33][34][35][36]} Though the intention of the system is to get a moderate from the majority party, this will not happen if there is no moderate, the moderate lacks name recognition, or voters are unsure of which candidate is more moderate.

See also

• Instant-runoff voting
• Two-round system

References