[EL] Texas special election

Sun May 2 12:58:00 PDT 2021

Now that results are in, it will indeed be two Republicans in the general election, in a district DJT won by 3 points.

I’ve updated the posting to note that according to the Washington Post, “Wright and Ellzey, who had challenged Ron Wright in 2018, had no substantive policy differences when compared with the other GOP candidates.” (I also fixed the typo so that it now reads 23 candidates).

Best,
Rick

Richard H. Pildes
Sudler Family Professor of Constitutional Law
NYU School of Law
40 Washington Square So.
NYC, NY 10014
347-886-6789

From: Law-election <law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu> On Behalf Of Rob Richie
Sent: Sunday, May 2, 2021 1:41 PM
To: Richard Winger <richardwinger at yahoo.com>
Cc: law-election at uci.edu
Subject: Re: [EL] Texas special election

I don't believe that Rick Pildes blogpost has been circulated on the list yet, but it's live on the election law blog here<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=121892>.

I'll add a couple things:

(1) The results are the latest example of the "roll-the-dice" dynamics of a single-choice voting system in a crowded field. The top two candidates going to the runoff together earned only 33% of the vot<https://www.politico.com/news/2021/05/02/texas-special-election-too-close-to-call-but-gop-on-verge-of-lockout-win-485194>e, while Democrats were locked out of the runoff even though their candidates together won more than that 33% total.

(2) If you run ranked  choice voting to get the contest down to two, you could choose to avoid the runoff, but at least would have more certainty in having representative candidates advancing.  Notably, our nation's 10th largest city -- Austin, Texas -- yesterday voted 58% to move to ranked choice voting for city elections as soon as legal questions involving state law are addressed. That results means that, since November 2018, RCV has won all 11 city ballots measures, by an average of 30 percentage points. Coming up in 2021, new uses of RCV include the New York City primaries in June, the Virginia GOP statewide nomination contest, and more than a dozen mayoral elections in Utah, including the capital city of Salt Lake.

Rob

On Sun, May 2, 2021 at 1:16 PM Richard Winger <richardwinger at yahoo.com<mailto:richardwinger at yahoo.com>> wrote:
Rick Pildes says the Texas special election for US House yesterday was a "top-two" election.  I disagree.  Top-two is a system in which the primary can never elect anyone.  Even if someone gets 100% in the first round, that person is not elected and there must be a second round.

The term "top-two" was coined by the Washington state press after Washington state became the first state to use that election.

In Texas yesterday, the event was an "election", because someone could have been elected, by polling 50%.  As it happens, no one did get 50% and there will be a runoff.  What Texas did yesterday is identical to what Louisiana does in all its non-presidential elections.  Louisiana has no primaries (except presidential primaries).  It just has general elections.  If no one gets 50% in Louisiana, there is a run-off.  For congressional elections that means a December runoff.

No one ever says Louisiana has a top-two system.

Rick also says 21 candidates ran in Texas yesterday.  There were 23.  He seems not to have noticed there was a Libertarian and an independent.  There were eleven Republicans and ten Democrats.

Richard Winger 415-922-9779 PO Box 470296, San Francisco Ca 94147
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