Oregon's (thankfully) defeated Measure 90 would have dumped the partisan primary process for a so called open primary with the top two candidates going to the general election. Even if they both came from the same party. Which did happen in Washington this year. Two Republicans running for the same office. One a TP candidate. The other, presumably, a more sane Republican. I'm not sure who won.
The complaint is that if the voter registers as an independent they can't vote in the partisan primary and claim that they are thereby "disenfranchised.". My recent take. Well boo F'ing hoo. You knew that going in. Should I complain that as a registered Democrat I don't get to vote for the Republican candidates as well? Because that's what it boils down to.
While looking information up for this entry I discovered that, yes Virginia, Oregon does have a real live Independent Party complete with donation guidelines and all those assorted goodies. No donations from unions, corporations, no money from out of state. Yadda, Yadda, Yadda.
The Republican candidate for governor also entered the Independent party primary held in July. And a quick check of his donors shows that he sure as hell didn't follow the guidelines. Surprise, surprise.
So, in Washington we had two candidates from different wings of the same party running for an office. In Oregon the governors race featured six candidates from seven different parties. The Republican was also running as an Independent. The house race had five candidates from six parties. The Republican was also running as an Independent. I forget now, if there was any overlap in the Senate race.
Frankly I very much prefer our much messier way of doing things. Under the top two the Greens, Libertarians, Progressives and any other small party would be SOL for the general election unless they could mount a successful write in campaign. Yeah, that's a really "democratic" scenario.
No comments:
Post a Comment