Politics Screw You, Top Two
posted by on August 5 at 11:04 AM
On KUOW this morning, I’m pretty sure I heard Secretary of State Sam Reed hypothesizing that Washington’s new top-two primary might increase voter turnout (compared to last year) because voters would no longer be so incensed about being forced to pick a party that they refused to vote.
Now, I know the Secretary of State office must have heard plenty last year from pouty, self-styled independents who couldn’t understand the art and fun of temporary, strategic partisan voting. But were there really that many of them? In our endorsement interview last week, Reed conceded that turnout might actually go down in this primary, because voters understand that there are few real choices being made. He thought this would only happen in places like Seattle, where it’s pretty clear that two candidates of the same party will make it through. But even in areas where party identification is more evenly split, there are tons of races where the two frontrunners are pretty evident before a single vote is cast.
In plenty of races across Washington state, this primary is essentially a glorified, state-funded public opinion poll. Candidates will get talking points and potentially jumpstart their fundraising by winning the primary, but they still have to do the exact same thing all over again in the general. Among the few races where your vote is likely to have a real impact are those for Supreme Court positions, where any candidate who earns over 50% of the vote gets elected without going on to the general. If Sam Reed is right—that voter turnout will only be depressed in places like Seattle and might even increase elsewhere—then that could eventually have a frightening impact on the political slant of our high court.
God, how I hate you, top-two primary.
God, how I hate you, top-two primary.
Hey, at least in this case you can vote Green and not feel like a total douchebag for throwing your vote away to a Republican.
But your Green vote in the primary means nothing. As far as I know, there isn't a Green in the state who is expected to make it through to the general.
Top-two is fine for pointless protest votes, but it's terrible if you want third parties to be in serious contention. See yesterday's PI story.
The Green vote in the primary "means nothing" because this isn't a "primary" per se... it's a two-round system.
And as far as I know, there isn't a Green in the state who would have been elected anyway.
I don't know, the change to vote for both Goodspaceguy Nelson AND Jim McDermott is pretty compelling.
I didn't say "elected"; I said "make it through to the general." All the Greens would have made it through to the general under the old system. And in races where they were running against a Dem and no one else—a potential that existed in plenty of races in Western Washington under the old system—they had a real chance to make their case.
Greens are going to have a really hard time fundraising as soon is it becomes clear that they will never be competing in a general election. Soon you won't have any candidates to cast your protest votes for anyway. Top-two is the death knell for third parties in this state. Stop thinking about how checking a certain box on your ballot would make you feel good and start thinking about what candidates you want to see in office.
Maybe the Greens should stop sucking and run an actual campaign that involves more than a poorly-constructed voter's guide statement and sitting around complaining about the primary to other Greens.
Maybe try not running for totally unwinnable races like Governor and focus on a local race where they could doorbell, hold community events and actually campaign.
I'm all for third parties having a voice, but for them to be on the ballot in the general it's not unreasonable to expect them to work for it a little ...
I'd argue the reverse, as would any strategically-minded third party.
Face it... there's no way that a Green or a Libertarian is going to win much more than dogcatcher in most areas. Strategic voting when you have a two-party system means that unless you're really confident that someone is going to win, you're not going to vote for the candidate that can beat your archenemy.
Better to focus your attention on a race where people don't feel as if they're implicitly supporting their opponents by voting third-party.
I hate that the voter's pamphlet allows candidates to make up political party names, like the "Cut Taxes GOP Party". I also hate the redundant moniker "GOP Party", as P stands for Party, so I read it as "Grand Old Party Party".
top-two is our way of phasing out the republican party.
top two only makes sense if you want money to control elections instead of organization and community building.
it messes with parties
the "prefers ____ party" means the candidates can straight up bullshit about what they stand for, like Rossi saying he "prefers GOP party". What the hell is that?
etc... hate it - Mickey Mouse politics.
Whereas the traditional primary system is a glorified, state-funded party meeting. I don't really understand why the top-two system is any worse.
And I never understood that about the parties' arguments in the court cases. If parties have the right to choose their own representatives, then why don't they have to pay for that right? If a party were really a cohesive organization as they claim, they'd have to charge dues to all members, and then only members could vote and the election would have to be paid for from those dues.
@11: Oh, and you would prefer the parties organize statewide caucuses? Primaries are a state-funded party meeting, yes, but at least in the pick-a-party system, there are no barriers to participation. Anyone can crash the party, so to speak. The parties have much less control over a primary election than they have over the annoying official D endorsements that have been brought on by this travesty.
The problem isn't the top two primary, it's the overall lack of democracy in our country. Gerrymandered districts restrict races that are seriously contested to very few. Deference to incumbents within political parties, combined with legalized bribery masked as electoral fundraising, means that many politicians, once elected in these safe-seat districts, will stay in office until they choose to resign.
When you add the top-two primary to this system, it actually IMPROVES things a little bit.
Whereas previously if you challenged an incumbent in a relatively safe seat from within his or her party, the decisive race would be the primary. The primary brings out more conservative, older voters, however, who are unlikely to vote for underdog challengers unless something really serious is going on. Or, in open seats in one-party districts, Jamie Pedersen, the most conservative person in the race he won in the 43rd, could get elected because the winner needed less than 25 percent of the vote.
The top two primary would ensure that someone like Pedersen would face a challenger, and that the general election would matter more than the primary. That's the way it should be.
As for districts where there is a real Republican/ Democrat split? There's a little chaos, but it works itself out in the end.
@13: I don't understand. There are no barriers to participation in the top-two system either. And the official D endorsements mean next to nothing, except insofar as they determine how much money each candidate gets. And anyone can still crash the party.
I think what I like most about the system is that it is the closest thing we have to a much better system, namely, instant runoff voting.
@14: Sorry, Jamie won because he had cash money and the opposition didn't have much discipline, not because he was more conservative than the other candidates. In general, top-two will reward moneyed candidates even more than the old system did, because races will last forever and cost much more.
@15: I prefer a partisan primary because I believe parties exist in order to hash out interesting internal arguments (state income tax, for example, in the Sims-Gregoire race) and then present their best or most strategic choice to compete against someone from another party, with another set of issues that have already been vigorously debated. It's instructive to see the kinds of debates candidates have within their own party--witness the discussion of immigration in this year's Republican presidential primary.
So I'm not saying that top-two has barriers to entry (except massive amounts of money, see my comment 16, above); I'm just saying that having the state fund a party's internal debate is not as invidious as it appears to you. That's how primaries are supposed to work. Moreover, pick-a-party primaries allow independents and third-party voters much more freedom than in other, party-registration states.
Personally, I've found this top two primary confusing.
Even if I've helped use it to mercilessly crush the Greens and GOP in the Seattle area. Yeah, so we're trying to shut you guys out - consequences, deal with it.
Like most people, I'd rather the two major parties STFU and go back to the very workable and far easier Blanket Primary we used for DECADES.
And that is my opinion on this mockery of an election.
The blanket primary is unconstitutional, Will. No nostalgia, please.
I love the top-two primary! Finally, the primaries stop being a taxpayer-funded donation to private political parties, and start being the frist stage of a two-round runoff system. Runoff systems don't do as much to eliminate strategic voting as approval voting or Concorcet voting systems, but they are nonetheless an improvement over straight plurality voting. Essentially, voters can express their top preference in the primary and, if that candidate is not viable, still have a voice in the runoff.
In terms of actually winning an election, third party candidates are just as viable in a runoff system as in a plurality system. In strongly left-leaning districts, the top two candidates may well be a Democrat and a Green. What third parties loose is the publicity that comes with being on the ballot in the better-covered second round, but election systems shouldn't be designed arround the goals of media whores.
Have a problem with the top 2 system: call 1-800-WAAAAAH!!!
maybe the greens should stop trying for the gold ring of the guv's or senate office and try for the easier nickel ring like a city office. if, and if, the greens are a really party, the taking over say drago's seat, in a city like seattle, b'ham, tacoma, redmond, etc. should be like shooting fish in a barrel. That is, unless the shooter is blind and sucks at shooting barrelled fish; suck like green at winning elections that is.
Let's "here" it for the little bits.
A little bit of sugar makes the miracles go round... and Sam Reed must surely need a miracle to make it through this glory hole called "two to you hoo Mr. Jury-meister meister heard-her".
On a second uninterupted theme dream for the electorate of news and opinions, and hopefully some will allow my hard tacked abraisive innuendo to wax philosophical momentarily...
Maureen Dowd featured graces and gravel washed across the Seattle Times today...
....and of course I completely missed the point of sending this e-mail to her directly.
So with out further ado about you, I shall again adhear to my own policy of contributing to the excess of verbage and ruffage here at The Stranger by adding in my own stylized filler.
Quick...
it's a bird, a plane... it's super denial.
The declamation, e-exclamation and rip to all things Ballew-ish... Adrian that is... the point.
Yes... em-bedded journalism IS racey business.
Have you listened to 'Twang Bar King'
lately?
Tis true tis true... only a few on this planet can pull that off without hemmoraging whales and bear claws...
Back to Maureen Dowd...
I believe if memory recalls a little bit of what she trans-pondered today, it would be I kind, and acerbic nods to Tara...
interpreted as I do by the inferrance of land and the little Miss U-boat
"Crazy on you".
earth shoes... yeah they came and went yet the idea remains a consistant amalgamation of the same old bally-whoo and baulderdash as hampered and hung out to dry in the sunshine of our lives...
and remember dear and constant readers...
"there is no shame in dressing... only shame in shameless". ( diction-o-crats-tis-le'-punditis-ideaous) go ahead and fill in the list if you must improve your lust for rules and grammatical verificatives.
I like to make it up on the spot... kind of like when " FRENCH KISSING " reminded the young lovers what 'hot' really was.... that is the beauty of word play...being bothered about "SOMETHING"!
....unlike sword play which is more akin to macho football games of free for all frat boys and squallid jockeys stained with sweat from handball and polo trannies on cigarettes and beer stained party weekends at the lake.
How many of you in class at one time or another fell asleep only to relive the Harrison Ford portion of your fantasy lives to see the co-ed flutter her eyes at you and dream again and again at night that it was all so very intimate?
yeah right...
So I shall say again to Ms. Dowd, we had the usual force from hell at Gasworks Park "the fiasco", this past weekend watching
The Blue Angels...
and very few casualties.
The usual arguments coincided among drunken bums and Old Airforce Pilots... yet again I stress that in the world where she resides, "there are far to many G-Forces in the cock-pit" to wander down to our neck of the woods any time soon.
Not that she and we would find ourselves and her that far apart philosophically speaking that is... it is just that she
( and I would not claim to speak for her or at her dear and constant reader ) may choose to answer in her own tounge....
....rather than interlopers assesment on and of my purpose for mixing metaphors in this self admittedly ( HERE'S A BUB FOR YOU A. BIRCH STEEN 'tawdry rag') The Stranger... Seattle's Only Newspaper.
Well, I am surew of one thing... that was sloppy grammer.
How many of you would call Peirce Bronson and thee RED HEAD... what was her name again... ( oh PUH-LEASE ) spies never tell their co- sex names when they slick it up...) in the remake to It Takes a Thief to steal the crown jewals from Seattle with a basketballers toe jam in a Steve McQueen remake of "HELL_BOY JONAS" and the quiznos kid?"
Well, there seems to be a technical interuption in the net now... gotta run...and tell Maureen that on a clear day you can see George W. in BEIJING.
On that clear day I will allready have been to the COURTROOM up on charges stemming from NARCOTICS and Terrorism.
Bogus no-doubt because I was treated poorly by the ad hoc commitee of 1968.
Um, the primaries continue to be a taxpayer funded thing. Same cost.
As to MR. F, who says, "And I never understood that about the parties' arguments in the court cases. If parties have the right to choose their own representatives, then why don't they have to pay for that right? If a party were really a cohesive organization as they claim, they'd have to charge dues to all members, and then only members could vote and the election would have to be paid for from those dues."
Your logic is impeccable. However, the fair minded citizens of this state acting thru their state legislators have decided to give the political parties the gift of taxpayer funded primary elections (when we had them) for political parties. Nobody in any court case speaking for any political party has said they, theparties, have a right to that taxpayer funding of the primary. They objected in fact to being told to have a primary. In fact there's a lot of state law on how you run yoru political party which to me seems a bit like the USSR system. I mean if your party believes nominees should be chosen by lot, so be it; by party funded primary so be it; by caucuses so be it.
I would think progressives would look around hte world and note that the main place people have national health care and such, the parties are pretty strong, e.g., Europe. As in Western. All this anti party shit is just anti progressive shit as far as I am concerned. LEt's have proportional representation then the Greens get in, too (well, so do the Evangelicals in their own party, the militarist conservatives in their own party, the anti immigrant party, etc.--gotta take the bad with the good) but then we also get a real labor oriented labor or social democratic party and in basically every system that does this you get......
--national health care
--adequate transportation infrastructure
--highest standards of living in the world when you factor in equity
--universal access to higher education.
The place not in Europe that have this have adopted or had imposed on them European style democracy. Australia, Japan, etc.
throw in the idea that 50% rules in the parliament and there you have it: democracy.
Which we don't have here due to holds and cloute and other bullshit in the US Senate as well as disproportionate rep. in the Senate and our institutional racism against any jurisdiction with a majority black population getting a voting rep. in Senate or House.
Are this fiddle faddle about top two is just window dressing if you want real democracy you need lots more than a party oriented primary.
This is what we need:
1. Every party pays for its own nominating process, and if you want to vote you have to join the party.
2. Each party can put one and only one candidate on the ballot for each position.
3. Only parties that got at least 2% of the vote in any race in the most recent statewide election can be on the ballot without a petition. Those are "major parties." Other parties have to get petitions.
4. Candidates can run as "independent" with no party affiliation but must pass the same petition threshold as minor parties.
5. No more than ten candidates can run for any position. So even if you have the minimum number of certified petition signatures, you might not make the ballot if other candidates have more signatures.
6. Have the election in November, and a run-off two weeks later if necessary. The one hitch here is that two weeks might be too short of a turnaround for all-mail elections. If so, use ranked voting (IRV or Condorcet) to avoid the need for a run-off.
This is essentially taking the rules of the old blanket primary and using them for the general election. It appeases the parties, frees the state from the burden of paying for party elections, and even opens the process up a bit.
We of the Monkey Party are glad that our fellow syndicoradicals like McCain and Gulliver and Duke Leto Atreides can join in our glorious revolution!
All hail the Top Two Primary and the glorious anti-middle-class revolution of the Elites!
I would think progressives would look around hte world and note that the main place people have national health care and such, the parties are pretty strong, e.g., Europe.
Ummm, have you looked at Zimbabwe, India, China, South America or Pakistan lately. I'd argue that they all have much stronger parties than we do. What makes Western Europe different is the Parliamentary system, which allows more than two parties to successfully compete. Not the strength of the parties, per se.
Also, holds are pretty anti-democratic, but cloture is intended to promote compromise and avoid tyranny of the majority. One could argue that it has largely failed at this, but that's primarily because of who has been elected to the Senate, not the cloture rule itself.
@24: Hey, I kind of like that idea.
We of the Blanket Party Forever counter-revolutionaries will never surrender.
We declare a fatwa on your Top Two farce!
@17: Interesting internal arguments? That's a pathetic cop-out. Primaries involve catering to the party base, while the generals involve catering to the centrists. (Is immigration as much of an issue in the campaign now?) But in neither case do they tend to represent what actually happens when the candidate is in office.
In terms of internal party debate... yeah, having the state fund it *is* invidious, and blanket primaries are a joke. There's really no reason why I should have any involvement in, say, who the Republicans choose for their candidate for governor. They are a separate party, and I'm not a member.
I'm kinda surprised that anyone that would consider themselves to be progressive would think that moving towards less democracy, and not more, would be a good idea.
@30: Um, in the top-two primary you get to help the Republicans choose their "nominee." Whichever R-identified candidate makes it to the general gets to call themselves an R (or GOPP, as it were) and is as such the de facto nominee.
Of course primaries involve candidates catering to their bases. That's the only way progressives inside the D party will ever be able to remake the Ds in their image. And the tension between tacking left or right in the primary and tacking center in the general certainly tells you more about a candidate's core convictions than you would ever learn if they were running a general election campaign the entire time.
You have wholly failed to demonstrate that a party primary is "less democratic," so I'd appreciate it if you'd cool it with the insults. Democracy requires authentic choices, and party primaries provide general election voters with a wider range of actual platform differences than the top-two system will tend to do. I also believe that democracy is served by less expensive campaigns, so there again, party primaries would be preferable. This is a complicated question. It just isn't true that one system is in all ways more democratic than the other.
Apparently you are quite disenchanted with partisan politics. But parties--including third parties--are the best way to formulate coherent political platforms that people can understand and embrace or reject as they prefer. Parties are imperfect, but they are useful.
Finally @ 31, Annie's real motivations come out. She believes that the party primary system gives weight to more extreme, less centrist voices, and since she sees herself as one, she thinks that's a good thing.
Mostly though, this just enourages politicans to equivicoate and lie, since they are going to have to tack to the center after the primary. And their centrist position is the one that they actually govern from, at least on high-profile issues, if they want to be re-elected. On less visible issues, they may try to pander to their base, but that mostly ends up in regulatory capture by business and union interests, which I hope even Annie sees are bad.
@32: Hardly a secret. Go back and read our our no endorsement on the top two proposal in 2004:
That said, primary voters can also vote strategically. Did progressive supporters of the state income tax succeed in pushing Sims over Gregoire? No. (And thank god, given Sims's recent craziness.) The centrist candidate won that closed primary.
I think it's good to encourage real debates on issues like the income tax. Washington's political climate already encourages mushy thinking and uninspired leadership. Why choose a primary system that exacerbates that?
In the top two primary, you get to choose which candidates get to the second round. That's pretty much it. You're not picking your nominee, just as Australians are not "nominating" party candidates with an IRV ballot or the French are not nominating party candidates for the second-round vote. Leftists in France in 2002 did not nominate LePen or Chirac, for example, nor would Greens be nominating Rossi or Gregoire in November.
The only thing that I got from the Seattle Times story you referenced is that the state's third parties are mostly whiners that tend to grossly overestimate the role they played in the previous process. To me, third parties have a much better chance of making their case in a directed, grassroots first-round campaign than, at best, as a spoiler in a general election. Pulling 5% in a general election amounts to a gigantic waste of time and sweat and money in my opinion, and it doesn't do a lick of good in swaying the political debate. You might as well get third party donors to pile their cash in a big bonfire and dance naked around it, for all the good it'll do. Heck, if third parties serve as spoilers in close elections, it may even sink these parties chances even further.
A focused, strategic grassroots campaign to shut out Democrats (or Republicans!) in key districts in the first-round primary, though, would be a far better way of making noise, and it could possibly even let them get some measure of political power. Not only that, but siphoning votes away from candidates when it "doesn't matter" is a better strategy than trying to persuade people that they aren't throwing their vote away in a close election between a Democrat and Republican. If you can take away part of the imperative to conduct strategic voting, third party candidates will do MUCH better at attracting votes, and I don't see a blanket primary or a wide-open general election doing better at that anytime soon.
So being losers and underdogs may appeal to some people's senses of persecution and self-righteousness, but I prefer to get my political message across by, you know... winning. And any way of giving third (and fourth, and fifth!) parties more power is a good thing for democracy in my book.
(And I should add that I'm not insulting you, I'm insulting the stupid idea that a stagnant political or electoral system is a good thing for democracy, as well as the stupid old "if it ain't broke" cliché often trotted out to defend it.) It's far too common, and if we really take democracy seriously, we should be looking for real ways to improve it.
There are choices:
www.blossforthe36th.com
Leslie Bloss
@34: But again, you're not selling the argument that the primary system is any better or less mushy. What you're proposing is a system where a candidate should pander to the left (or right), usually the center-left or center-right, and then tack quickly to the middle to compete for the centrists. In a case like that, you're just delaying the inevitable switch, or worse, nominating a party candidate that cannot represent the interests of a bulk of their constituents. What makes you think that the left is better off with either approach? Just because people talk for a little while about policies that won't be enacted?
And in terms of the state income tax issue, I would have hated to have seen that in the general election. That's just a situation where you want to pick a candidate that isn't... ummm... stupid.
@35: Ummm... where it reads:
Therefore, everybody’s background is considered "good to go" in order to serve the Legislature. This is a "good" thing!
don't put the "good" in quotation marks.
And... umm... desalinization plants aren't the way to bring the cost of *any* utilities down.
Okay, so it's good for extremists to have a forum in which to carry out their ideological battles over proposals, like a state income tax, that have no chance of actually becomming policy. Why do we have to publically fund these forums? Isn't that what blogs and think-tanks are for? Sometimes the think tanks even manage to assemble coherent, well-argued cases for their policy preferences, which is far more than I've ever seen a primary candidate do.
Annie if you think it's ok for someone to be elected by old, comparatively conservative voters in a summer primary when many are out of town, with less than 25 percent of the vote (as in, three quarters of the voters would prefer someone else!) then I don't think anyone can change your mind. But for the record top two primaries increase the number of voters who are likely to influence who is elected in the majority of legislative districts, which are safe-seat, one party district. That, to me, makes them more democratic, and worth the trouble. But fear not. They won't last. Political parties have a wonderful way of representing their own interests against the interest of voters. The days of the top two system are numbered.
Comments Closed
Comments are closed on this post.