Hi Larry (and everyone),

Aren't these Southern California cities just wrong to call the first round
of a non-partisan election a primary?

Illinois calls non-partisan races the General Municipal Election and the
Supplementary Runoff (February 25 / April 1), at least for Chicago (which is
now non-partisan).

Do the city charters spell out the different names of the different election
rounds or does state law govern any of that?

That's also interesting that cities are under no obligation to hold their
elections on the same day. I wonder if that makes election administration in
LA County easier or more difficult.

Thanks for the insight,
Dan
----- Original Message -----
From: "Larry Levine" <larrylevine@earthlink.net>
To: "Dan Johnson-Weinberger" <djw@fairvote.org>;
<election-law@majordomo.lls.edu>
Sent: Monday, November 25, 2002 4:16 PM
Subject: Re: No primary for a non-partisan race

Cities in California, all of which hold non-partisan elections, frequently
call their first round the primary and then have a run off. Some have only
one round and it's winner-take-all, plurality. Burbank, for instance, will
have a "Primary Nominating Election" on Feb. 25, 2003 and a "Burbank City
General Election" on April 8. Inglewood, on the other hand, will have a
"General Municipal" election on April 1 and an "Inglewood City General
Runoff" on June 3. The City of Los Angeles lists a "City Primary

Nominating

Election" for March 4 and a "Los Angeles City General Election" for May

20.

Municipal non-partisan elections do not allow candidates to list partisan
affiliations on the ballot, while the chamber proposal would include
partisan affiliations. Seems to me this chamber thing may be some kind of
hybrid that doesn't fit any existing (California) model and thus would not
fit any existing terminology.
Larry Levine


----- Original Message -----
From: "Dan Johnson-Weinberger" <proportionalrepresentation@msn.com>
To: <election-law@majordomo.lls.edu>
Sent: Monday, November 25, 2002 4:54 PM
Subject: No primary for a non-partisan race

This is an interesting discussion on terminology. I've found that many
people call the first-round of a non-partisan election a 'primary' while
they call the runoff election the 'general' election. It sounds like the
Chamber proposal is generating similar terminology which Richard is

right

to

criticize.

There is no such thing as a non-partisan primary election.

The only type of primary election is a partisan election, restricted to

some

degree to members of a political party.