Saturday, April 13, 2013

Why keeping the 60 percentage threshold to avoid a primary helps Fair Elections

 We already have a large percentage of contested races go to primary. If we have more primaries, we are apt to have more last minute attack pieces and more ethics problems. There will also be a need for more political donations raised for the more expensive races. We don't need to provide more power to the lobbyists.

I had considered raising the  threshold to avoid a primary, but after looking at the numbers, it doesn't make sense.

The 60% works, allowing a shot of a challenger to eliminate an incumbent and yet requires a challenger to be a strong candidate. 

Based on the party released sheets since 2000 for state wide races or congressional races, At 60%, threshold to avoid a primary, 1/2 of contested races went to primary. If at 2/3 threshold to avoid a primary, 67% of contested races go to a primary and at 70% threshold to avoid a primary, 70% of the races go to primary. The last 2 numbers do not have to match, but they ended up doing so. 

They tracked 44 races, 14 of which were not contested for the nominee. We realize it is only 5 or 6 contested races difference, but when you are looking at 30 contested races, a change of 5 is 17%.

70% would not have helped Sen. Bennett in 2010. He was not in the top 2 coming out of convention. In fact the more moderate Tim Bridgewater was selected by 57% of the delegates in the last round. Mike Lee managed to get 43% and make it to a primary. Sen. Bennett endorsed Tim Bridgewater during the primary, but with voters ticked at TARP and ObamaCare, they went with Mike Lee.

Sen. Hatch just barely missed eliminating Dan Liljenquist by hitting just under the 60%
threshold to avoid a primary, and Jason Chaffetz just missed eliminating Chris Cannon by hitting just under 60% threshold to avoid a primary

Both races went to primaries. The 60% line works fine. Raising it decreases the chance of eliminating an incumbent, and we get weaker challengers. 

It was the caucus system that got Sen. Hatch, Sen. Bennett, Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., Gov. Leavitt & Lt. Gov. Walker, etc. elected in the first place. The system is fine when they win, but if any of them lose, it is bad?  

The democrats in SLCo. just added an additional vote at the end of their conventions to see if they can avoid a primary. They have no interest in the initiative passing and have been vocal not to support it.

The current system does not protect the incumbent, wealthy or famous. We think that is a good thing.


I like the 60/40, but initially thought I would be willing  to go to 2/3 and 1/3. It would make it harder to boot out an incumbent at convention and but give someone new a little better chance of making to a primary. Gov. Gary Herbert would have most likely faced Morgan Philpot this year and Rep. Chris Stewart would have faced Dave Clark. Moving it back to 70/30 makes it almost impossible to kick out an incumbent at convention. That violates their 4th principle. This year, my friend Rep. Newbold was defeated at convention in her re-election campaign. If the threshold to avoid a primary had been 70%, she would have made it to the primary. I asked her last month if she favored changing the threshold to avoid a primary to 70%. She said no.

The proposal from the "Count My Vote / Buy My Vote" crowd wasn't just to raise the threshold to avoid a primary. It was to also remove multi-round voting or IRV and send all candidates that hit the lower range to the primary if someone didn't hit the higher range on the only vote. With that proposal, why raise the range at all?

"Fair. A system that provides inherent advantages to those who are incumbent, wealthy or famous is not acceptable." I agree and the "Count My Vote" proposals up to now don't follow their own principles. Perhaps that is why they deleted it from their list of 4 principles. 
 

We already have a large percentage of contested races go to primary. If we have more primaries, we are apt to have more last minute attack pieces and more ethics problems. There will also be a need for more political donations raised for the more expensive races. We don't need to provide more power to the lobbyists.

Three of my other posts on this subject:

http://www.fredcox4utah.blogspot.com/2013/04/fair-elections-most-important-principle.html

http://www.fredcox4utah.blogspot.com/2013/04/thoughts-on-utah-neighborhood-elections.html

http://www.fredcox4utah.blogspot.com/2013/03/fair-elections-in-utah.html