On Wed, Aug 27, 2008 at 2:03 PM, Mark Fredrickson
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> In districts with extreme partisan leanings, this system *could* open
> up the field. In such districts, a primary win is de facto a general
> win, but with a smaller pool of eligible voters (assuming party
> registration is required to vote in party X's primary). In an
> Australian ballot primary (allowing one to vote for different parties
> in different races), everyone who turns out would have a say in the
> candidates (and the eventual winner in a strong partisan district),
> not just party members.
>
> I can't think of any examples of this system currently in action. I
> would be interested to know if you find any.
This system is functionally identical to the Louisiana nonpartisan
blanket primary ("jungle primary") used for state and local elections
since the 1970s, and until recently also used for federal elections in
the state. I believe Washington's recent Top Two initiative, affirmed
recently by the Supreme Court, is also indistinguishable in practice.
Presumably someone somewhere has at least published something on the
operation of the Louisiana system per se.
My recollection is that Edwin Edwards (of "vote for the crook" fame)
initially advocated it to buffer the state's Democrats from losses at
the hands of the emerging GOP threat, although the mechanism by which
this would do so is to my mind underspecified - presumably he feared
that the median Democrat was too far from the state/district median
voter to ensure viable general election candidates would emerge from
the traditional Democratic primary process in the era after black
enfranchisement. La. kept Democratic control in the legislature
longer than most other southern states, but then again La. also has a
bigger firm Democratic base than most other southern states too;
Miss., probably the most comparable state in terms of demographics and
history, held on about as long, and it did not adopt the La. primary,
so the empirical case seems weak at first blush.
I can't muster any particularly strong "political science" arguments
for the system beyond Mark's intuition that it could be helpful in
settings where partisan gerrymanders or the local context make one
party dominant over the long term, effectively disenfranchising those
who choose to identify with the minority party (or don't identify at
all with a party or don't want to participate in Yet Another
Election). But I think there are preferable ways to deal with these
situations (nonpartisan redistricting commissions, multimember
districting in combination with proportional or semi-proportional
electoral rules, limited/approval voting, ranked-preference voting
without a runoff [IRV, Concordet, ...], etc.) rather than wresting
control of the party label away from a political party absent active
disenfranchisement of qualified voters by party officials. Since we
are presumably talking about state and local offices* (e.g. not being
constrained to single-member district elections to federal office),
better electoral reform is available and probably should be advocated.
* I believe for elections to federal office this system is illegal,
which is why Louisiana reverted to a traditional party primary +
plurality general election system starting this spring for elections
to the House and Senate.
Chris
--
Christopher N. Lawrence <[log in to unmask]>
Assistant Professor of Political Science
Texas A&M International University
313 LBVSC, 5201 University Blvd
Laredo, Texas 78041-1920
Website: http://www.cnlawrence.com/
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