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Category: top two (Page 2 of 2)

King County board votes to study IRV

April 25, 2008 / / 0 Comments

IRV folks have been pushing for a charter amendment in King County for the past few months, similar to the path taken in Pierce County. The charter review commission moved to suggest the county study IRV instead.

Not really a win, but not an all out loss either. Looks like Pierce County is still the pioneer. This fall with the Top Two/IRV taste test will be interesting:

Via email:

Hi folks this is to let you know that last night we won a modest but significant victory on the road to opening up our voting system to more voices and choices through using Instant Runoff Voting (IRV), also known as Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) in King County. The King County Charter Review Commission, a group of citizens appointed every 10 years to recommend changes in the County’s Charter, voted 16-1 to ask the King County Council to form a citizens task force to investigate whether we should put an initiative in support of IRV for County Elections of the ballot in King County. The recommendation is for the citizens’s task force to be convened in January 2010 and to make a recommendation about the advisability of an IRV initiative by the end of the year.

Of course, we would have preferred something much stronger, we were urging the commission to recommend adoption of IRV right away due its many advantages, including ensuring the election of a true majority, encouraging greater voter turnout, reducing negative campaigning, allowing people to vote their hopes rather than their fears by eliminating the “spoiler” factor, and saving pubic dollars by combining the primary and general election into a single contest.

Still, the commissions’ vote was a significant victory for electoral reform, their initial recommendation had been to essentially do nothing- take no action of IRV and to simply wait and see what happens in Pierce County where IRV will be used for the first time this year after a successful pubic vote. Our public testimony affirmed the fact that IRV has been used successfully around the county and around the world for decades and demonstrated broad public support for a system that offers much greater choice. The fact that IRV had more support during the Comssion’s pubic hearings than any other issue by far was recognized in their discussion last night; clearly it was what turned the tide in favor of the commission voting to give IRV more specific consideration. About 30 people testified during the 4 public hearings, including a large number of young people, and dozens wrote letters as well. Thanks much to all of you who participated!

There is much more work to be done, including educating the members of the King County Council about the merits of IRV. We gained a lot of support and educated a lot of people during the public hearing process. Let’s savor this small but significant victory and keep our poitive momentum going to have an effective citizen’s advisory group that will recommend putting IRV on the ballot in King County.

Thanks
Joe Szwaja
Vice President Instant Runoff Voting of Washignton

What we should have done (sham nominating conventions)

April 24, 2008 / / 0 Comments

Instead of putting on sham nominating conventions across Washington State, we Dems should have done something different. Well, we shouldn’t have sued to overturn 872 in the first place.

But, we could have become more relevant on our own term type organizations, rather than forcing our way into relevancy. Rather than writing my point all over again, I’ll just quote myself:

The most blistering attack on the Top Two is that it hurts parties, and therefore hurts democracy. I’d agree that parties are good for Democracy, but the kinds of parties that are built for closed primaries are not the kinds of parties people are seeking to join. In essence, we need parties that are built for people that tried to get their friends to vote a certain way and put bumper stickers on their cars, but didn’t attend a political meeting.

As politics is becoming less traditional, moving out into the world of personal relationships, so do the parties (or at least the Democratic Party does, I don’t really care what the Republicans do).

I like the ideas of the Blue Tiger Democrats in this regard. They say the local parties should be as interested in civic engagement on the local level as they are with winning elections. The more people see the Democratic Party itself as a force for good, the way you see the Shriners or the Lions, and less as an organization that sues to overturn a popular initiative and win elections for the sake of winning elections, the better.

Granted, the Top Two primary is gone and was obviously unconstitutional. But, I would have loved to see the party that thrived under those conditions. How would you have built a party, with broad participation, if you had an open primary system?

An Obama alternate delegate from Thurston County wrote this blistering attack on us (political party types) after going through the caucus process:

And, more to the point, I was constantly on the verge of asking why a party that self-styles itself “Democratic” completely fails to choose its nominee in a democratic manner. The caucus system itself is already designed to disenfranchise more people than necessary. [While I acknowledge the limitations of a traditional primary vote, it at least has the advantage of not turning away those with disabilities (the caucus I attended was decidedly wheelchair-unfriendly), those with jobs that require their presence on Saturday mornings, and those who are not particularly interested in sitting around for several hours to cast a vote.]

…

But that’s the wrong impulse. The right response, after learning more about how fucked up the political system in this country, is to want to limit as much as possible the amount of sway political parties have. I want the Thurston Democrats and Republicans to have as much political power as the Thurston County Economic Development Council or the League of Women Voters. In other words, take the political parties out of politics. Let the people decide with as few or as many filters as they want.

Limit as much as possible the amount of sway political parties have. Local parties with as much power as the EDC or League of Women Voters.

This isn’t death, we can live and thrive in a world like that.

That’s what is happening anyway (see this link again) and the lawsuits against the Top Two are the reaction of an entrenched political bureaucracy against changing times.

People already are engaging in politics in ways that are contrary to how political parties operate. If we want to be relevant, we should stop trying to force people into closed primaries and meet them where they’re at.

“Nominating conventions” are baloney, B.S., horse puckey

April 23, 2008 / / 0 Comments

Thurston County Dem chair John Cusick (a great guy I don’t envy right now), explaining to one particular PCO (who passed on the email) the difference between the need to “nominate” a candidate in a contested local Dem race and why that isn’t an “endorsement.”

In reaction to the Top Two primary, the state party is forcing local organizations into a sham process so they can set up a lawsuit:

With regard to the Thurston County Democrats, this simply reaffirms our long-standing policy with regard to endorsements: we do not do them before primary elections, but we may provide campaign services support.

This does not affect the “nominating convention” meetings we have scheduled for next Monday. While endorsements are an expression of further support, nominations propose someone as a candidate. As I have continued to state, our nomination of one candidate among two we support does not in any way diminish our support of both candidates. (emphasis mine)

We must provide the name of a nominee for each county partisan position to the Washington State Democrats in order to preserve the asserted legal right of Democrats to select their nominees. If we do not do so, the State Party Chair will simply select one for us. (emphasis mine)

The candidates involved have mutually agreed to do this quickly with minimal fanfare. The nomination is simply to preserve a legal right, it will not constitute an endorsement or any other elevated form of support.

My first thought is that we don’t nominate anyone. If the state party is forcing us to make a meaningless nomination, then let them make the meaningless nomination.

These nominating conventions are a sham process to put forward an “official” Dem candidate for the ballot so we can sue to overturn Top Two after the election when that nomination was recognized.

Argument for Top Two died today

April 7, 2008 / / 0 Comments

If we had the Top Two back in 1996, Ellen Craswell would not have made the general election and only a few people would be writing about her today.

1996 September primary results:

Gary Locke D 287762 23.65%
Norman Rice D 212888 17.50%
Ellen Craswell R 185680 15.26%
Dale Foreman R 162615 13.37%
Jay Inslee D 118571 9.75%
Norm Maleng R 109088 8.97%
Jim Waldo R 63854 5.25%
Pam Roach R 29533 2.43%
Nona Brazier R 21237 1.75%
Brian Zetlen D 6152 0.51%
Warren E. Hanson R 4886 0.40%
Bob Tharp R 4825 0.40%
Jeff Powers SWP 3742 0.31%
Mohammad H. Said D 3007 0.25%
Max Englerius D 2837 0.23%

Top Two primary digest (what has been said)

March 18, 2008 / / 0 Comments

First off, some bad predicting from Andrew up at the NPI blog:

They haven’t won anything yet. If they lose – and they’re likely to – the door will be slammed for good on that lousy system that no other state, save for maybe Louisiana, uses. The leaders of both the state Republican and Democratic parties have expressed confidence that the Supreme Court of the United States will uphold the lower court rulings invalidating the “Top Two” primary.

And…

That hour of oral argument will be heard tomorrow morning, and in a few months, the Court will announce its decision in Wash. State Republican Party, et al. v. State of Washington, et al. If history is any indication, Reed and the Grange are bound to be disappointed when the Court’s opinion is issued – and the rights of those who belong to a political party will be upheld.

The Other Side points out the funny election we would have had in 1996:

In 1996, the top candidates were Gary Locke, Norm Rice and Ellen Craswell. Under this new system, Gary Locke and Norm Rice would’ve made it to the general leaving no GOP candidate.

So, who were the real choices in 1996? A farfarfar right-wing Republican who eventually abandoned her party or a two King County political chieftains, one moderately progressive and other a center-left business Democrat? I’d say the Top Two would have had it right in 1996.

And, Goldy is swearing a lot, but here is one of his clearer points:

The whole purpose of a primary election is to enable the parties to choose their candidates through more democratic means, rather than via smoke filled rooms. Now that you’ve done away with that, and entirely removed the parties from the nominating process, we might as well skip the primary and go straight to a general election… that way the ultimate winner can be chosen on a ballot that folks actually turnout for.

He’s right in the sense of the historical meaning of primaries, though the original intent of the traditional Washington primary was to remove parties and their smoke filled rooms from the primary election. Though he is wrong about the Top Two taking the power of nomination away from the parties.

They can still nominate, it just means that their nominee might not make the general. I’ll write more about this later, but parties just have to make their nominations mean something.

And, some stuff I wrote back in the day:

The best argument against a closed primary
Open primary grandstanding
Participatory democracy and caucuses
So, who’s to say that the parties can’t live with the Top Two

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