Posted by jesse shayne on December 15, 2017 at 1:55 PM
Doug Jones’s upset victory in Alabama — a state that President Trump won by nearly a 30 point margin only a year ago — was fueled by a perfect storm of voter turnout. And while high participation among African-American voters surely played a significant role in securing Jones the win, a surge of younger and independent voters — who lined up to oppose Roy Moore — was also key to the victory.
The Washington Post reported that 60 percent of voters ages 18-29 voted for Jones, while CNN’s exit polls found 66 percent of voters between the ages of 30 and 39 lent him their support.
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Posted by jesse shayne on December 13, 2017 at 10:48 AM
Some people may think Californians don’t know what they’re doing when they vote on ballot initiatives, but a new poll suggests that voters were anything but confused when they approved the top-two primary.
The Public Policy Institute of California released a statewide survey last week revealing that 60 percent of likely voters think it’s “mostly a good thing” that they have the option to vote for any candidate, regardless of party, in primary elections for legislative offices.
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Posted by jesse shayne on December 04, 2017 at 1:33 PM
One of the deepest divisions within the Democratic Party is playing out right now behind closed doors. The divide is not over candidates or policies but over whether the party is prepared to make its own nominating process more democratic.
While the public face of the party is united against the president and focused on winning races in 2018, the fractures laid bare during the 2016 election cycle are far from healed. Millions of Democrats — and Americans in general — are still reeling over a 2016 presidential election season that left so many of us feeling that the system is rigged and no longer representative of the people. Donna Brazile's recent revelations of preferential treatment by the Democratic National Committee has only added fuel to the fire.
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Posted by jesse shayne on November 15, 2017 at 4:11 PM
This article was written by Danny McCauliffe for Florida Politics
With Constitution Revision Commissioner William “Bill” Schifino Jr.’s recent proposal to open Florida’s primaries, a nationwide movement has some steam in the Sunshine State.
Specifically, the change proposed by Schifino—a Tampa attorney and 2016-2017 president of The Florida Bar—would allow independent voters to cast ballots in primary elections.
Florida’s constitution currently provides for closed primaries: Elections in which votes for primary candidates can only be cast by voters within their respective parties, which excludes the more than 3.4 million registered “no party affiliated” (NPA) voters in Florida.
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Posted by jesse shayne on November 15, 2017 at 4:03 PM
This article was written by Brian Dickerson for the Detroit Free Press
Last week brought mixed tidings for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Gretchen Whitmer.
The good news is that a MIRS/Target Insyght pollreleased last week shows her beating six prospective rivals (including three who have not entered the race for governor) among Democrats most likely to participate in next August's party primary.
The bad news is that a second Target Insyght survey suggests that one of those undeclared candidates, Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, would do considerably better in a general election match-up with state Attorney General Bill Schuette, the current frontrunner for the Republican gubernatorial nomination.
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Posted by jesse shayne on November 02, 2017 at 11:47 AM
This article was written by OP board member Jessie Fields for the Gotham Gazette
Today the dominance of the two major parties has frozen the country’s political development along a racial divide: the Republican Party uses law and order, tax cuts and anti-immigrant rhetoric to capture white voters, and the Democratic Party depends on high black voter turnout to win elections, while failing to address the ongoing inequality between people of color and white people. Pollster Cornell Belcher has found that 63% of black people feel taken for granted by the Democratic Party. The current highly partisan political environment is producing both government dysfunction and a general sense of dread that the county is moving backward.
The American people have been so manipulated and divided by politicians and our political process so over-determined by two-party control that for ordinary people of good will to meaningfully come together requires a wholesale break from politics as usual. We should not confuse multiracial solidarity—when people of different races come together to fight for a common goal—with the dynamic of political party constituency groups such as African-American, Latino, LGBT people, and women making demands within the Democratic Party and fighting each other for the attention and resources of the party and its elected officials.
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Posted by jesse shayne on October 31, 2017 at 2:01 PM
This article was written by Open Primaries legal counsel Harry Kresky for IVN
One of the most interesting and important legal fights going on right now centers around the scope of the First Amendment rights of political parties. In a variety of contexts, the parties have asserted their rights over the rights of the people.
How can it be, however, that the rights of parties formed by the people can trump the rights of the people, through their elected government or otherwise, to determine how their elections for their public officials can be organized?
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Posted by jesse shayne on October 31, 2017 at 1:16 PM
This article was written by Open Primaries Senior Director of National Outreach Jason Olson
Jeff Flake, whether you love him, hate him, or have never heard of him, just pointed out one of the biggest reasons why government and politics has become so dysfunctional: a party primary system that forces Americans to divide against each other. Flake, Arizona’s junior senator, recently announced that he will not be seeking reelection in 2018. Many pundits have predictably leaped into a frenzied discussion of who is up, who is down, and all of the usual “politics as reality television show” that we’ve come to expect from them.
But if you listen closely to what Senator Flake is saying, you realize that his decision is not just a reflection of his dislike of President Trump. “Here’s the bottom line. The path that I would have to travel to get the Republican nomination is a path I’m not willing to take, and that I can’t in good conscience take,” Flake told the Arizona Republic in a telephone interview. “It would require me to believe in positions I don’t hold on such issues as trade and immigration and it would require me to condone behavior that I cannot condone.”
Flake feels he cannot win a Republican Primary without appealing to the small segment of party die-hards that turn out to vote in Arizona’s partisan primary system. Despite the media portrayal of a vigorous competition between Democratic and Republican candidates in races across the country, the Beltway crowd’s best kept secret is that primary elections, not November general elections, determine most electoral contests.
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Posted by jesse shayne on October 24, 2017 at 1:57 PM
The 2016 primary elections in Florida were a watershed moment for our state. Despite spending some $13 million of their hard earned tax dollars to fund primaries, 3.4 million independent voters were shut out of one of the most important elections in a generation. Millions more voters of all stripes were justifiably appalled by their exclusion.
No matter one’s politics, the right to vote is sacred, and Florida is now one of only nine states with a completely closed primary system that requires participating voters be registered members of a political party in order to vote. Florida’s voters are increasingly registering without a party affiliation, so our election system has become unsustainable.
Floridians recognize how important primary elections have become. Due to gerrymandering and the creation of safe districts for the major parties, 90 percent of all races are determined by primary elections.
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Posted by jesse shayne on October 06, 2017 at 10:45 AM
This article was written by Lloyd Dunkelberger for the Sun-Sentinel
As Florida's population grows and more residents shun traditional party affiliations, voters are befuddled, if not angry, about the state's closed-primary system, including the use of write-in candidates, three local elections supervisors testified Wednesday.
“When it comes to the primary election, our voters are confused,” Broward County Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes told the state Constitution Revision Commission's Ethics and Elections Committee.
Many new voters move to Florida from other states with more open voting systems as opposed to Florida's closed primaries, which are restricted to voters who are registered with parties. Florida is one of nine states using a closed-primary system.
“We have people coming from all over the country, and they bring with them the experiences that they have had and what they know,” Snipes said. “It's difficult for them to understand.”
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