R Street Policy Study No. 292 September 2023 - The Good, the Bad and the In-Between:

Summary

Senate race as an example (Figure 1), the primary election ballot included 13 candidates across four different political parties.21 After tallying the totals, Patty Murray earned the most votes among the Democrats, Linda Smith earned the most votes among the Republicans and none of the third-party candidates reached at least 1 percent of the total vote.22 In the end, the general election featured. [...] remove the blanket primary in Washington, and the Ninth Circuit ultimately ruled in favor of the party in 2003.28 With the blanket primary thrown out just Justice Scalia, writing for the majority in before the 2004 election cycle, the Washington state legislature scrambled to California Democratic Party v. [...] Supreme Court, but this time the Court ruled 7-2 in favor of the blanket primary system.41 The key distinction, according to the Court, between the original blanket primary and the top-two primary centered around the distinct role of parties in the two systems. [...] Thus, the top- two system shifted the competition from the primary to the general election, Top-two voting and, in so doing, reflected the input of the 15,390 more constituents who provided citizens with more options in the primary participated in the general election.62 election and occasionally created competition where To summarize, the implementation of top-two voting in Washington shows it wo. [...] Following the passage of Ballot Measure 2 in 2020, Alaska implemented a blanket primary just like Washington, but the four candidates with the most votes advance to the general election, instead of just two.98 The major difference between Washington and Alaska is that Alaskans have an opportunity to rank each of the candidates on the ballot instead of picking just one.