“Top Two” is an electoral system-rigging scheme to increase the prospects for political elites with outsized influence in both the government and corporate media by controlling an election’s outcome through limiting which candidates may appear on every Utahns’ general election ballot.
No wonder that establishment narrative amplifiers would back an initiative to further entrench the power of the incumbent political class.
It’s much easier for the self-dealing, duopolistic, political industrial-complex to muster a plurality of voter support from special interests in a primary election than it is to reach outside of its base of support and cobble together a majority.
If Top Two were implemented, a ten-candidate primary election could advance one of the top two winning candidates to the general election with a single-digit result.
Utah Rep. Blake Moore (less than 31%), Utah Gov. Spencer Cox (36%), and the current members of the St. George city council (less than 15%) all owe their recent general election wins to advancing in the primary election with a plurality vote, not a majority vote. Majoritarian electoral methods such as ranked choice voting are taxpayer protection measures because they decrease the likelihood that a self-dealing, politically-entrenched plurality will be able to win elections and raise taxes that would otherwise be opposed by a majority of voters. Ranked choice voting is also an election integrity measure because it greatly increases the likelihood that the winner of a single seat election is supported by a majority of voters.
Top Two systems have not delivered the outcomes voters were promised where implemented. In California, where Top Two has restricted voters’ general election choices since 2010, seasoned observers refer to the method as “Same Two” for its failure to offer meaningful choices to general election voters, note that the system has simultaneously lead to greater political polarization and reduced eligible voter engagement, and have joined with many disenfranchised Golden State voters in calling for its repeal. Some Top Two advocates claim that ranked choice voting is not politically-viable statewide in Utah.
Utah is more than halfway through a pilot project started in 2019 to try out ranked choice voting at the municipal level. Although RCV has its detractors — primarily status quo beneficiaries of the political-industrial-complex — most Utah voters (and a majority of state legislators who helped pass the pilot project into law) who have participated in ranked choice voting elections favor them.
Let’s give Utahns becoming familiar with ranked choice voting the time we were promised to complete the pilot project so that we may determine whether to join voters in Alaska and Maine by using RCV statewide. In the meantime, Utahns should get behind real electoral reform rather than enable the establishment’s latest power grab.
The FairVoteUtah Plan offers a far more competitive and representative way to involve Utahns from all walks of life in our governmental bodies; it’s a proportional way based on election methods that have an ongoing and proven track record in countries such as Germany, Northern Ireland and New Zealand.
Rob Latham, St. George