The silver lining in 2010's election for Democrats is that the Republican Party cannot win without Sarah Palin Supporters. This implies that to guarantee a different outcome in 2012, we must increase the friction already present between the Republican Party and tea-partiers slash Palin supporters.
One way to do this would be to push for Strategic Election Reform, or the use of 3-seated proportional representation elections for state representatives. But another way would be to make it impossible for extremists to win statewide offices. Tea-partiers would have zip chance to elect another "Sarah Palin" as governor if we used a "top two primary" for statewide elections. In my previous diary, I described a way to improve on the "top two primary" used in Washington State and which was recently adopted by California. Here I want to explain more why this would be good for Democratic party activists.
- We'd waste less time and energy on defense against the Radical Right.The "top two primary" election rule I proffered forces voters to specify their "top two" out of five candidates. If one of these candidates were a Palin-endorsed Republican then her supporters would have to vote for a more moderate Republican. But would moderate Republicans vote for a Palin-endorsed Republican? Not necessarily, they might choose to vote for a moderate Democrat or an Independent candidate as their second choice. Thus, a higher than normal turnout by Palin-supporters would not necessarily elect her candidate. And if a Palinesque candidate cannot win then why bother? Thus, we would not need to spend as much time on defense for major statewide elections.
- There'd be less negative campaigning, which would give more air-time to Democratic party activists' issues. If voters have to pick two candidates then, as a candidate, I would be less likely to attack my opponents, because I want their supporter's votes. If I cannot go negative then I need to deal with the issues raised by my supporters and the other four candidates. This would truly change the tenor of the campaign. Note, we could also do this with an Instant Runoff Voting.
- Unlike with FairVote's IRV, this would not require any changes in voting machinery and the number of votes in each of the twenty options could easily be tabulated at the precinct level.
- A five-way race is more likely to be competitive than an essentially two-way first-past-the-post race, which gives ethnic and economic minority groups more sway potentially on their issues.
- Less potential for Third party candidates to spoil elections. And, Third parties who are unable to get a candidate on the ballot could spend their limited time and energy more productively on more local elections.
- If we only advocate for the use of an instant runoff "top two primary" in statewide elections, this would not try to stamp out all third parties. We need third parties to help raise new ideas and issues that Democratic party activists also would appreciate!
I hope this explains better my motivation for sharing about an instant runoff version of a top two primary with Kos-folk.
dlw