<x-flowed>It looks to me that Mike did know the difference but the headline
writers screwed up.

On 5/5/06, Joseph Lorenzo Hall <joehall@gmail.com> wrote:

I believe this is the article in question?

Blanket primaries a step toward reform
(by Mike Alvarez)
<http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/opinions/ci_3777153>

On 5/5/06, ban@richardwinger.com <richardwinger@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Recently, a political science professor authored an
> op-ed piece that appeared in at least two California
> daily newspapers, advocating that California switch to
> the type of primary in which only two candidates
> appear on the November ballot.
>
> The author referred to that system as "the open
> primary".  I advocate that, no matter what side anyone
> is on, that everyone agree to the common vocabulary
> used by US Supreme Court decisions, and set out in the
> book "Voting at the Political Fault Line".
>
> "Voting at the Political Fault Line" was published by
> the Univ. of Cal. Press in 2002.  Many political
> scientists contributed chapters to that book.  Some of
> the chapters define the 4 basic types of primary.
>
> Definitions set out in the book:  (1) Open primary,
> one in which participation is open to all registered
> voters, but each party has a separate ballot, and
> voters are restricted to participating in a single
> party's nominations in a given election (page 211);
> (2) Closed primary, one in which participation in the
> primary is limited to registered members of that party
> (page 193); (3) Blanket primary, one in which
> participation is extended to all registered voters,
> (page 193); (4) Non-partisan primary, which is not
> defined, but described as the system used in Louisiana
> (page 240).
>
> While these definitions could perhaps be better, they
> are orthdox.  They are so orthodox, that a Superior
> Court in California ruled on August 9 in Vandermost v
> Shelley (Sacramento, C04-7231) that proponents of the
> Louisiana-type of primary could not refer to it as an
> "open primary" in the Calif. Voters Handbook.
>
> I advocate that the Louisiana-type primary be called
> the "top two" primary.  That is the term used by the
> mainstream press in Washington state for that type of
> primary.  It seems neutral and descriptive.
>
> Since the "top-two" primary is almost surely going to
> be on the November 2006 Oregon ballot, and since the
> 9th circuit is pondering the constitutionality of that
> type of primary (in a Washington state case), and
> since proponents of that type of primary are active in
> California, this is not a moot issue.
>
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>


--
Joseph Lorenzo Hall
PhD Student, UC Berkeley, School of Information
<http://josephhall.org/>
blog: <http://josephhall.org/nqb2/>

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