2994

Yeah, Prop 14. It’s crap. Sometimes I wish I could vote for a ballot initiative banning ballot initiatives.

2995

Obama did little to dispel the myth that we know at all what we’re doing in the Middle East. I kind of resent the continued secrecy from past administrations.

2996

Let’s dispel once and for all with this fiction that Barack Obama doesn’t know what he’s doing. He knows exactly what he’s doing.

2997

Do we know what he is doing?

What is he doing?

2998

shakeee
shakeee900×506 207 KB

2999

The Republicans had actual card-carrying Nazis running in their primaries in 2018. At least two. Know one was in Chicago area. This isn’t even including Steve King.

And shooting Republicans as bad for the environment, think of all the lead! Madame Guillotine is more environmentally friendly! ^_^

3000

Not to mention there was a serious possibility of Alabama electing a pedophile, knowing he was a pedophile.

3001

Meh. Washington state has been doing the top-2 primary thing for twenty years or so. It’s fine.

3002

It basically just turns the primaries into the first phase of a runoff election.

According to this though, Washington didn’t hold it’s first top two primary until 2008… Also sounds like it’s kind of different from California’s process?

3003

How so? What it means, is that in a place like Seattle that has no chance of a Republican actually winning the election, we end up with a choice between two democrats. This is good.

3004

What do you mean, “how so?”

That’s what it is… Everyone runs, and the top two have a runoff.

3005

Ah, I get it. I do suppose that’s one way to look at it. I still don’t see why it’s necessarily a bad thing? Why should we just enshrine spots for two political parties, when one has no chance to win?

3006

In the strictest sense, a “normal” general election is just a run-off between the top Democratic vote getter and the top Republican vote getter. In the general case, third party candidates are statistical noise.

3007

Oh, I don’t actually think it’s necessarily a bad thing.

It kind of eliminates the purpose of political parties at all though. Of course, from my personal perspective, this isn’t really a bad thing.

Yes, but you are guaranteed one candidate from every party in that final election. The final election is between the parties. The open primary top two thing makes it between two candidates that can be from the same party.

Again, I’m not saying this is necessarily bad.

However, there is one potential case where it can break down, and i seem to recall this almost happening in California in a few districts.

Imagine a case where a district is strongly Democratic, say, plus 10 for the Democrats.

In that district, Democratic candidates (especially without an incumbent) would likely think that they have a good shot at the seat. So you get a bunch of folks in the primary. Say, 15 different candidates.

The Republicans, being weaker, only field 2 guys. Maybe neither is really great, no name guys.

In that situation, you can run into a case where the 45% of the primary vote from Republicans gets split across two guys, say giving them 20 and 25% respectively.

The 55% of the vote that’s Democratic gets split across 15 candidates. The total of these is much more than either Republican, but none of them get over 20%.

The end result is that you end up with a solidly Democratic district, where there are only republicans in the general election.

3008

I think that was trotted out as a fear in the Cali elections. I don’t think it ever happened in practice.

3009

I didn’t happen, but the potential was definitely there in a few districts. There was a point where California’s jungle primary had the potential to hand the House to the GOP because of split Democratic votes. Jungle primaries suck. If you want to fix the primary system, closed primary elections (NOT caucuses) with ranked choice voting in both primary and general elections is the way to go.

At the very least, in a jungle primary state, the state Party needs to really have its act together and throw its endorsements and money behind a single candidate in each district (the CA Dems did not in 2018)… which has the adverse effect of making people think the Party has a finger on the scale.

3010

You could combine the jungle primary with ranked choice voting, and that would also fix the problems, even if you then fell back to a traditional general.

That would actually be a pretty good system.

3011

I guess in theory that could happen but I don’t think it ever came close to happening in 2018. Instead we ended up with a few races with two Dems running against themselves in November.

3012

Is the enemy of the enemy of my enemy, my friend?

3013

That whole article is crazy talk. I don’t believe there is an anti-anti-Trump left. I think all of those people are either Russian trolls or Republicans pretending to be Democrats.