Question

Provide a specific example that explains why you believe more states should use a top two primary or maintain a closed primary for their state's direct primary elections.

Answer 1

First, lets dicuss what is meant by this top two primary system: This initiative was taken up by the government of washington and was set into place after the people of Washington approved this in 2004 general elections. According to this,the primary no longer serves to choose the select people of a political party. Or in simple words, it simply round up the number of participants to two. The two competitors who get the most votes advance to the general election, negligent of the party's desire. As a result, it is possible for two candidates that come from the same political party to win in a top-two primary and face off in the general election.

The following statements given by the top intellectulas pretty much explain why one should support this syatem:

John Opdycke, president of Open Primaries: "The fact is top-two primaries are working. Every voter in California can now participate in the first round of voting and is free to choose candidates from any party. Politicians have to (gasp) engage with voters outside their own parties from the get-go. The number of competitive election contests has increased. The political parties are as strong and influential as they have ever been, with a big difference: Now, the parties are participants, not gatekeepers. They don’t get to decide who can and cannot vote in primaries and they don’t control the general election ballot."

Daniel Krimm and Eric McGhee: "More incumbents faced primary challenges from within their own party this year than they have on average in the last five election cycles (42% vs. 18%). Redistricting does not fully explain this change, because incumbents in districts that changed a great deal were not substantially more likely to face a challenge than those in districts that did not change so much. Instead, the top-two was probably the stronger cause, since it gives primary challengers a better chance of appearing in the fall election. Indeed, almost all of the increase in primary challenges occurred in seats where the odds of a same-party runoff were the best."

As an example lets discuss the highlights of California's top-two primary system;

• It offered large scale competition in elections, which resulted in more interest of people in elections,given the opportunity for no-party preference and other voters to have a say, and led to general election winners who would have previously not advanced past the old partisan primary system.
• The top-two primary system provides an opportunity for more voters to register and vote for any candidate, as well as no-party preference voters.
• The number of same-party general legislative elections in California is high. These same-party elections have had significant impacts on the competitiveness of elections.
• The sequence of two rounds allowed for the participant who would have lost a closed party primary to advance and win the general election. In 34% of competitive same-party general elections, the winning candidate in the top-two primary would not have a partisan primary in the old primary system.
• Same-party general elections cought more consideration and candidates in those races involved in more campaign spending than different-party general elections.