Posted by jesse shayne on April 26, 2017 at 10:38 AM
This article was written by Andrew Huston for Gainesville.com
The Florida Constitution Revision Commission is convened every 20 years. It consists of 36 appointees plus the state attorney general. The governor appoints 15, the Florida Senate president appoints nine, the speaker of the Florida House of Representatives appoints nine and the chief justice of the Florida Supreme Court appoints three.
The commission, whose purpose is to consider initiatives to go on the 2018 ballot, has begun holding public hearings. The first was in Orlando, followed by Miami, Boca Raton and Tallahassee. One is being held today in Gainesville and more are scheduled over the next few weeks in other parts of the state (visit flcrc.gov for details).
The hearings give citizens an opportunity to provide direct input on various issues to the commission. If you believe our state constitution needs changes, please plan to attend in order to have your voice heard. As a volunteer for Florida Fair and Open Primaries, I’m using my two minutes to make a case for a top two open primary.
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Posted by jesse shayne on April 20, 2017 at 12:59 PM
This article was written by Steve Hough, President of Florida Fair and Open Primaries, for Florida Politics
Florida has a once in a generation opportunity to fix our “rigged” political system via the Constitution Revision Commission.
If you’re like me, you don’t need some expert to tell you about the adverse effects of gerrymandering.
Acrimonious partisan rhetoric, high-dollar campaign financing, and a terrible closed primary system locking out 3.1 million independent voters in our state, has allowed power to shift from citizens to politicians and party leaders.
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Posted by jesse shayne on April 18, 2017 at 2:34 PM
This article was written by Shawn Griffiths for IVN
Florida voters may soon have a chance to adopt nonpartisan open primaries. At least, that is the hope of a coalition of nonpartisan organizations that are asking the state’s Constitution Revision Commission to put it on the ballot in 2018.
“We’re looking to develop primary reforms that let all voters vote and create more responsive candidates that actually represent the communities that elect them and are not simply responsive to the partisan few that come to elect them in closed primaries,” said Jeremy Gruber, senior vice president of Open Primaries.
Open Primaries is a nonpartisan, nonprofit group that supports opening primary elections, with an emphasis on implementation of nonpartisan elections similar to electoral systems already in place in California and Washington state. In these two states, all candidates and voters, regardless of party, participate on a single primary ballot in state and congressional races, and the top two vote-getters move on to the general election.
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Posted by jesse shayne on April 14, 2017 at 3:08 PM
This article was written by Adelaide Reukgauer for The Retriever
As of the 2016 presidential election, 23 of the 50 United States operate under some form of open primary. In these states, voters are permitted to choose any party’s ballot to vote on within an election. This affiliation is not permanent and can change from election to election.
In contrast, states with closed primaries allow only those who are registered to a certain party to vote on that party’s ticket. So, only registered Republicans may vote for the Republican presidential candidates, and only registered Democrats may vote for Democratic presidential candidates in the primaries.
While these 23 states allow for constituents to vote for any presidential candidate regardless of party affiliation in primaries, Maryland is one of the remaining states that only permits their constituents to vote for presidential candidates within their registered political party. This system adversely affects both our democracy and our state by endorsing polarization and should be done away with.
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Posted by jesse shayne on April 10, 2017 at 11:12 AM
This article was written by Debbie Benrey for IVN
State Representative Gabrielle LeDoux (R-Anchorage) is the latest legislator to introduce legislation that would open state elections to all voters. Rep. LeDoux’s HB200 would establish a top-two style nonpartisan open primary election system, similar to Washington and California’s models.
Alaska’s current primary elections are semi-closed, meaning voters are allowed to participate only if a political party lets them. While the Democratic congressional and state primaries are open, allowing any registered voter to participate in their primary, the Alaska Republican Party only allows registered Republicans, nonpartisan, and undeclared voters to participate in their primary. The Alaskan Independence Party and the Alaska Libertarian Party both have open primaries.
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Posted by jesse shayne on April 05, 2017 at 2:44 PM
This article was written by Patricia Callahan for the Bangor Daily News
Before anyone calls me a hypocrite, yes, I am about to write a post that includes thoughts from a national political organization, Open Primaries. As the name suggests, this group advocates for opening the full electoral process to all voters around the country, regardless of their party status.
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Posted by jesse shayne on April 05, 2017 at 2:35 PM
This article was written by Open Primaries President John Opdycke for The Hill
Last week, the Democratic Party Unity Reform Commission began soliciting input from voters on a set of controversial process issues that emerged during the 2016 contest between Bernie Sanders and Hilary Clinton.
The commission was created last summer under pressure both from Sanders’s delegates as well as open primaries activists who submitted 42,000 signatures on a “enact open primaries in 2020” petition and forced a vote on the issue at a rules committee meeting.
The commission survey poses questions about delegate selection, superdelegates and primaries. At the top of their list of survey questions is: “Do you think that open primaries and caucuses, meaning that unaffiliated voters can participate, make the Democratic presidential nominating process weaker or stronger?”
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Posted by jesse shayne on April 05, 2017 at 1:25 PM
This article was written by Anthony Man for the Sun-Sentinel
Government reformers and liberal activists and liberal groups want to reshape a central element of Florida’s election system by changing Florida’s Democrats-only and Republicans-only closed primaries into open primaries in which all independents can vote.
They’re hoping that the state Constitution Revision Commission, which meets once every 20 years, will endorse the idea. The commission holds public hearings Thursday and Friday in South Florida.
Tim Canova, founder of the political group Progress For All, said open primaries “are good for democracy. I think closed primaries keep voters away from the polls.”
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Posted by jesse shayne on March 31, 2017 at 1:12 PM
This article was published by The Ellsworth American editorial board
Maine has a strong tradition of high voter participation in all levels of elections. Perhaps our participatory town hall style of government, perhaps our small town responsibility as free citizens, Mainers generally are engaged in local, state and national elections.
An exception is our primaries. Maine employs a ‘closed primary’ process allowing only members of the candidates’ party to choose who will represent that party in a general election. Currently, 37% of Mainers—those individuals labeled as ‘unenrolled’—are not able to vote in a primary thus have no voice in selecting a final candidate for local statewide or national office. This group of ‘unenrolled’ citizens is the largest voting bloc in the State of Maine, surpassing Democrats, 32%, and Republicans, 27%, according to year-end 2016 statistics.
Proponents of creating an ‘open primary’ system cite voter frustration and hyper-partisanship as sound reasons to move away from the current ‘closed primary’ process. A post-election 2016 survey by Mainers for Open Elections reports that 81% of voters feel that Congressional representatives do “what’s best for the party” rather than for the state’s citizens. They further report that 73% of voters believe taxpayer funded primaries should be open to all voters.
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Posted by jesse shayne on March 31, 2017 at 1:10 PM
This article was written by Jessica Reeder for the Reno Gazette-Journal
On March 27, Nevada Democrats in the state Senate refused to hear a bill that would have opened up primary voting to all eligible voters. In one move, they effectively blocked 28 percent of Nevada’s voters — 413,000 people, including yours truly — from participating.
The concept behind open primaries is simple: Anybody can vote for anybody, whether you’re a member of the same party or not. In the bill proposed to the Senate, the top two vote-getters — regardless of their party — would have advanced to the national election.
I’m going to out myself here as a Bernie Sanders supporter; in fact, I was a delegate for him in 2016. But I’m not a Democrat. Before the primaries, I was registered No Party Preference, but decided to register Democrat so I could vote for the candidate I thought was best. I showed up to my neighborhood caucus and stood for Sanders; then I did the same for Washoe County and even paid my own way to Vegas. There, I witnessed firsthand the chaos of the Nevada Democratic Primary.
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