On April 17, the Montana House passed SB 408, which says there will be a popular vote in November 2014 on whether Montana should switch from an open primary to a top-two primary. The bill passed 57-43. All Democrats, and four Republicans, voted “No.” Now the bill goes back to the Senate.
Ballot Access News
Edited By Richard Winger
This is bizarre. The Montana House is 61R-39D. Most districts in MT are very R. Adopting top-two would have the effect of requiring Rs to run against other Rs in the general election in many districts, as the top 3 primary finishers are likely both to be Rs.
Why would the Rs want to force themselves in most districts to waste money and effort running against other Rs in the general election?
The Montana Senate is also very R (29-21). Maybe the vote in the House is just a phony vote that House Rs can tout to their constituents, knowing full well that the Senate will not pass the bill to send the issue to voters. But the press reports that the Rs really do want a top-two primary in order to stop third parties from siphoning votes they think belong to them.
Correction: In the above comment, “top 3” should be “top 2”.
The Senate had already passed this bill when Democrats tried a procudure called the call of the Senate, to kill by stopping the vote before a deadline. That didn’t work. Because of amendments, the Senate has to agree to those amendments and the bill itself. People could send the Republican Senators an E-mail. You can find their addresses under http://www.leg.mt.gov. Most have E-mail under their contact information.
Well sh*t. I thought MT shelved this earlier…? Whatever. I hope the Senate or the Montana voters will make the wise choice and vote down this disastorous proposal.
P.R. and nonpartisan App.V.
NO primaries.
The Montana Republican Party chairman should resign. People say he pushed the Ron Paul Republicans out of the party and wouldn’t allow those Ron Paul delegates to move forward at their state convention. The effect was those people voted Libertarian, and a few statewide Republicans lost the election. Now there are blaming libertarians for what the Republican Chairman did, when he kicked out those Ron Paul folks. In the U.S Senate race the Republican candidate could only get an extra 355 votes from his 2010 vote totals. That same candidate lost over 90,000 votes from his 2008 totals. While libertarian candidates that ran against this Republican candidate increased votes every year, from 16,500 in 2008, to over 20,000 in 2010 and over 31,000 in 2012. So this top two is about getting rid of the competition, but Republicans would have had a better chance of electing folks like the governor had the chairman not kicked out the Ron Paul folks.
Interesting. So the Rs are setting themselves up to run against Libertarian-Rs in the general elections for the Legislature. Rather counter-productive.
#7 Besides keeping the Libertarians off the general election ballot, this bill could serve another purpose as well – keeping the Democrats off the general election ballot in statewide races. Since the top two candidates go on to the general election regardless of party, the Republicans have a build-in advantage. There are more Republicans than Democrats and their primary turnout is likely to be higher.
In 2012, there were 2.23 primary candidates per house race.
Only 29 of 100 races had three or more candidates. 17 had 2 or more R’s, 12 had 2 or more D’s. Almost invariably the party with more candidates won the seat. Typically multiple candidates won’t run unless they see some opportunity for victory.
4 of the 29 had only D’s (1 race) or R’s (3 races) so the general would serve as a unipartisan runoff.
Assuming the same candidates and results in the primary, 7 of the 14 races with one D and two or more R’s, would have been R v R under Top-2.
Based on the general election, 3 of the districts which would have had an D v R under Top-2, might have been better served with an R v R (based on overwhelming support for the Republican candidate). But looking at the primary results, the reason they would have had a D v R, Top-2, was the relative weakness of the a second R candidate.
Assuming the same candidates and results in the primary, all 11 races with one R, and two or more D’s, would have been D v R under Top-2.
Arguably, based on general election results, 3 of the districts might have been better served with a D v D race in the general, but would have been D v R under Top-2 due to the weakness of the trailing D candidates.
Perhaps one race, HD-38 in eastern Montana, that would have been R v R under Top-2 might have been somewhat competitive as D v R, but the two R’s together had 74% of the primary vote.
Top 2 would produce results more reflective of the electorate of the individual districts.