Finally: Legislation To Eliminate Primary Runoffs

After the super low turnout at last week's primary runoff elections, State Senator Joseph P. Addabbo (D-Queens) has introduced legislation to get rid of runoffs. City Room reports that Addabbo, who will look at various avenues to eliminate them, said, "Spending $15 million to hold an election the voters do not wish to participate in is a waste of taxpayer dollars in a time of economic difficulty. That money could have instead been spent more wisely, like on our seniors or school children."

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By Jen Chung in News on October 5, 2009 4:36 PM

Comments [rss]

JW

Exactly -- get rid of primaries and run-offs altogether. As an indpendent, why should my tax money go to support an election in which I can't even participate?

Have a free for all including all parties and candidates in September, with the top 2 vote-getters moving on to a general election in November.

uncleeddie

We should just switch to a preferential voting system, ranking the candidates from 1 to 5. We can both avoid a costly runoff and prevent a candidate without majority (or close to it) from winning.

Problem solved. Make me da fuckin' mayor.

JMH

Not many people voted in the first round of primaries either, so we may as well get rid of those too.

If only ten people bother to vote, declare the person who got 6 votes the winner.
If 10 people voted and one person got 6, s/he is the winner. What we're dealing with is what we do if one candidate got four votes, one candidate got three votes, and three candidates each got one vote.

This problem could be addressed with instant runoff voting, or, preferably, it could be addressed by finding a better way to explain to voters why they should care enough about voting to spend a measly fifteen minutes doing so.