ARIZONA REPUB PRIMARY ROUNDUP
- Arizona GOP to Moderates: This Party’s Already Full (PAUL CRAFT, Frum Forum)
- GOP purity: "We do not serve Independent voters" (Posted by AzBlueMeanie, Blog For Arizona)
- State GOP looking to close its primary to independents (Rhonda Bodfield Arizona Daily Star)
- Arizona tea party movement making McCain and Hayworth work for vote (Campaign Strategy Examiner, Ford O'Connell)
- Opponents not rushing to spend against 'top two' primary system (Sac Bee)
- Prop. 14 fight comes down to words - Measure's success could hinge on a court battle over language. (By George Skelton, LA Times/Capitol Journal)
- Ballot measure would provide open primaries (Wyatt Buchanan, Chronicle Sacramento Bureau)
- Arnold's Third Term (By Joe Mathews, Fox & Hounds Daily) It is hard to know how much of Brown’s Arnold-style talk is campaign strategy, and how much is a sincere preview of how he would govern. NOTE: Jerry Brown has not taken a position on Prop 14, which leads me to the suspicion that his "Arnold-style talk" is more campaign strategy than a governing strategy...
- INDEPENDENTS OF AMERICA, UNITE! (by Keith Nelle, CAIVN)
- State lawmakers’ latest shame (by Pete Golis, Press Democrat)
3 comments:
I've been reading up a bit more on Prop 14, and still am not clear on all the details. It doesn't seem like it actually establishes an open primary. As I understand it, in an open primary, all voters could vote in all party primary contests in all races, and the point of the primary is to eliminate all candidates but one for each party in each race. But in the "top two" system you can only vote for one candidate in every race, and the "top two" vote getters in each race move on to the general election right? If so, top two seems to be more like turning the general election into a runoff and the primary into the general. But why not just have an actual open primary and then a runoff race following the general election?
Damon -- "why not just have an actual open primary and then a runoff race following the general election?" Prop 14's "top two" structure is meant to revise an earlier referendum that was supported by the voters but ruled unconstitutional by the courts. This proposition is modeled on Washington State's primary and, far from perfect, is considered "a start". These issues are not decided in classrooms, there are real politic issues going on, including Sen. Maldonado's brave negotiations around the budget. The question for me, and for many independents, is whether the parties get to decide who can vote in the important first round of voting (commonly called a "primary") -- and often these are the deciding elections, not the general -- OR do voters get a say? Voters are literally being pushed around by the parties in our current political culture. The issue is democracy.
California is free to have an open primary, in which there is no such thing as party registration and a voter can choose which party's primary to vote in. 22 states have that and no court has ruled that is unconstitutional.
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