A Florida group that supports top-two says it has rewritten its proposed initiative, and will start to collect signatures soon. The revised measure holds the actual election for state and county office in August, and only if no one gets 50% will there be a runoff in November. However, because federal law requires states to hold congressional elections in November in all districts, for Congress the measure won’t let anyone be elected in August, and the election between the top-two will be in November even if someone running for Congress does get 50% or more in August. See this story.
The story has some factual errors. It says Washington state started using top-two in 2004, but actually Washington started using it in 2008. The story says Nebraska has a top-two system. Nebraska has never had a top-two system. It has semi-closed primaries for president, congress, state executive office, and partisan county office. For legislature it has non-partisan elections with no party labels on the ballot.
Yes, that would be a lot better. As for the RNC and DNC why should they be worried? With the top two only scheme they get to keep those pesky alt parties they hate off the ballot by the time people start paying attention.
Another strong blow to the RNC & DNC scumbags. Great news.
They could just run the federal primary/runoff in November/December like Louisiana and Georgia, though. The courts seem to be okay with that system.
Each party should pay for and control its own nomination process, whether by primary or convention – but government entities should not eer pay for, administer, or interfere in any party’s method of selecting who their nominees will be, whether it be rolling the dice or whatever else those parties choose. If anyone doesn’t like those parties’ chosen candidates it should be very easy to qualify new parties as well as independent candidates for the ballot.
Open the primaries to Independents. Let the voter have a wide choice of candidates from every party.