Comments

1
Why not just move to Instant Runoff Voting.
2
Both I-54 and I-55 assume the much larger and more representative electorate should only be bothered with two candidates in each race - -and just the two with the most support in that small electorate. That not representative democracy as our founders conceived it.

The current system is not worth defending either, however. Let's open up the general election by advancing more candidates and using ranked choice voting -- or, better yet, open up representation with multiseat districts and proportional representation (as in the fair voting plans at http://www.fairvoting.us).
3
Instant Runoff Voting (the ranked system FairVote's Rob Richie refers to) is widely understood by experts to be the poorest of the five commonly discussed alternative voting methods. For example, it can punish voters for ranking their favorite candidate in 1st place! Here's a brief video explaining this, by a math PhD who did his thesis on the mathematics of voting.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtKAScORevQ

Score Voting and Approval Voting are two much simpler systems that are mathematically guaranteed to never punish you for supporting your favorite candidate. Here's a comparison between Approval Voting and IRV.
www.electology.org/approval-voting-vs-irv

Richie is on the right track with Proportional Representation. PR would virtually eliminate Gerrymandering, and would go a long way toward addressing the severe underrepresentation of women, minorities, and minor parties in our legislative bodies...

However, PR doesn't apply to single-winner executive posts such as mayor or governor. And it is very hard to enact PR in a two-party-dominated environment—since it would instantly take something like 30% of the seats away from the D's and R's. Much more practical is to loosen the two-party stranglehold by enacting Score Voting or Approval Voting as an intermediate step. By making it 100% safe to vote for your favorite candidate, regardless of "electability", these systems will have a much stronger tendency to elect independent and minor party candidates, who will presumably be much more open to PR. Ranked voting methods such as IRV unfortunately suffer from tactical exaggeration which causes them to maintain two-party domination. They sound interesting in theory, but in reality, they don't deliver.

Clay Shentrup
Co-founder, The Center for Election Science
4
The top two primary is a very bad idea. Oregon voters recognized that when they defeated the same measure in 2008 (Measure 65) by an overwhelming vote of 66-34%. Top-two blanket primaries are intended to make political party labels meaningless, thus depriving voters of the most important single piece of information that most voters rely upon in making their decisions on candidates. They also allow complete strangers to hijack the names of all parties on the ballot, including minor parties (which Petition 55 actually destroys, thus reducing the choices available on all ballots). The "new" measure is 99.9% the same as Measure 65 of 2008 (and is exactly the same in all meaningful respects), the information at http://saveoregonsdemocracy.org is very relevant, particularly http://saveoregonsdemocracy.org/danmeek.html
5
In response to Dan Meek:

> Top-two blanket primaries are intended to make political party labels meaningless

Here's what Measure 55 is intended to do:

"Statement of intent. The intent of the Open Primary Act of 2014 is
to create a fully open, equitable, and fair election system, that will be applied to specific
federal and state elected offices currently elected on a partisan basis. This Act will
abolish the current practice of relying on political party members or party officials in
closed primary elections or conventions to nominate candidates for these offices -- while
prohibiting the participation of non-affiliated voters entirely -- and replace it with a
system through which all Oregon electors may participate on an equal basis, in all phases
of the selection process. This specifically means changing the current system of
primary election contests for these offices so that all Oregon voters have the equal ability
to select two finalist candidates to appear on the general election ballot, regardless of the
political party affiliation, or lack of party affiliation, of the elector or candidate."

Source: http://goo.gl/ntMGRW

This is completely different than the intent of the 2008 measure, and that has important ramifications for how the resulting law will be constructed if the measure passes.

Here's more about the definition of an "equal vote".
http://www.unifiedprimary.org/equalvote
6
The operative text of IP 55 is 99+% the same as Measure 65 of 2008 and is the same in all material respects. The vague statement of intent does not change the operative language of the measure. Courts enforce the operative language. Also, nothing in the statement of intent negates anything I have said about the operative language of IP 55. You then offered a link to a website about the Unified Primary, which also is not IP 55.

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