[EL] Dems have no candidate in Cal US House district, yet Dem is largest party

Thu Jun 7 14:46:29 PDT 2012

I suppose the whole idea of a "party" is that members may talk to each other and figure out the best strategy for winning office and implementing the party's policy preferences. That seems to be central to the right of political association. It shouldn't be surprising that there is coordination of this sort. I don't see why it isn't a perfectly appropriate response to the top two system's effect of minimizing the role of parties.

Mark S. Scarberry
Professor of Law
Pepperdine Univ. School of Law

From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu [mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] On Behalf Of Dan Meek
Sent: Thursday, June 07, 2012 2:13 PM
To: Rob Richie
Cc: Election Law
Subject: Re: [EL] Dems have no candidate in Cal US House district, yet Dem is largest party

Regarding Larry Levine's comment:  "Imagine the news stories if some party boss tried to keep candidates out of the race."

That has already happened in Washington State and has been publicly reported.  See, for example, http://www.columbian.com/news/2010/may/11/republican-dean-drops-out-of-18th-district-race, which notes:

Republican educator Bob Dean withdrew from the 18th District legislative race Monday.

"I am simply acknowledging the political realities at this time and want to ensure that we retain the Republican seat in the 18th District," he said.

Dean is the second Republican candidate to withdraw from the crowded field. Cowlitz County Planning Commission member Shannon Barnett dropped out last week, citing personal reasons.

The Clark County GOP has signaled that it hopes to winnow the field for the top two primary to avoid splitting the Republican vote too many ways in the Aug. 17 election.
Here is another press report that even describes the meeting of party leaders: http://tdn.com/news/state-and-regional/article_d1ae0de6-591f-11df-a5fd-001cc4c03286.html?mode=story

The Clark County GOP was successful in persuading some Republican candidates to withdraw from the primary race for the Washington House 18th District.  I have heard no denunciation of this practice from any news outlet.
Dan Meek
dan at meek.net<mailto:dan at meek.net>

  10949 S.W. 4th Ave
  Portland, OR 97219

  503-293-9021
  866-926-9646 fax

On 6/7/2012 12:53 PM, Rob Richie wrote:

I just was looking at another feature of how voters handled "Top Two."

In the US Senate race, the percentage of ballots in the Senate race invalidated due to overvotes was 1.03% so far -- with the higher rate among absentee voters suggesting that the rate will increase as more votes are tallied.

The SF mayoral race with 15 candidates and ranked choice voting had overvotes of 0.4%, less than half that error. Oakland's mayoral election rate of error was even lower. But as usual, media attention to such things is only on the alleged complexity for voters of RCV, not the real world fact that they made far more errors in the "simple" top two system.

It will be interesting to see how error rates might have affected some of the closer races.

Rob

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On Thu, Jun 7, 2012 at 1:21 PM, Bruce Cain <be.cain48 at gmail.com<mailto:be.cain48 at gmail.com>> wrote:
Richard

If and when the same thing happens at the statewide level, the top two will immeditately lose favor.  But if that does not happen, we have to wait for the myth of the polarization miracle cure to die its slow, inevitable death.
Bruce Cain
On Thu, Jun 7, 2012 at 1:00 PM, Richard Winger <richardwinger at yahoo.com<mailto:richardwinger at yahoo.com>> wrote:
http://www.ballot-access.org/2012/06/07/democrats-are-largest-party-in-californias-31st-u-s-house-district-but-top-two-open-primary-leaves-party-with-no-candidate-in-november/

Rob Richie also posted about this race on this list yesterday.  I was expecting some discussion, but so far I haven't seen any.

Richard Winger
415-922-9779<tel:415-922-9779>
PO Box 470296, San Francisco Ca 94147

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