Approval voting is an electoral system in which voters can select any number of candidates instead of selecting only one.
The two-round system (TRS), also known as runoff voting, second ballot, or ballotage, is a voting method used to elect a single candidate. The first round is held using simple plurality to choose the top-two candidates, and then in the second round the winner is chosen by majority vote. The two-round system is widely used in the election of legislative bodies and directly elected presidents.
Strategic or tactical voting is voting in consideration of possible ballots cast by other voters in order to maximize one's satisfaction with the election's results. For example, in plurality or instant-runoff, a voter may recognize their favorite candidate is unlikely to win and so instead support a candidate they think is more likely to win.
Party primaries or primary elections are elections where a political party selects a candidate for an upcoming general election. Depending on the country and administrative division, voters may consist of all voters open primary, or solely the members of a political party in what is called a closed primary. In addition to these, there are other variants on primaries that are used by many countries holding elections throughout the world.
The Peace and Freedom Party (PFP) is a left-wing political party with ballot status in California. Its first candidates appeared on the 1966 New York ballot. The Peace and Freedom Party of California was organized in early 1967, gathering over 103,000 registrants which qualified its ballot status in January 1968 under the California Secretary of State Report of Registration.
The American Independent Party (AIP) is a political party in the United States founded in 1968.
Electoral fraud, sometimes referred to as election manipulation, voter fraud, or vote rigging, involves illegal interference with the process of an election, either by increasing the vote share of a favored candidate, depressing the vote share of rival candidates, or both. It differs from but often goes hand-in-hand with voter suppression. What exactly constitutes electoral fraud varies from country to country, though the goal is often election subversion.
A write-in candidate is a candidate whose name does not appear on the ballot but seeks election by asking voters to cast a vote for the candidate by physically writing in the person's name on the ballot. Depending on electoral law it may be possible to win an election by winning a sufficient number of such write-in votes, which count equally as if the person were formally listed on the ballot.
In the politics of the United States, elections are held for government officials at the federal, state, and local levels. At the federal level, the nation's head of state, the president, is elected indirectly by the people of each state, through an Electoral College. Today, these electors almost always vote with the popular vote of their state. All members of the federal legislature, the Congress, are directly elected by the people of each state. There are many elected offices at state level, each state having at least an elective governor and legislature. There are also elected offices at the local level, in counties, cities, towns, townships, boroughs, and villages; as well as for special districts and school districts which may transcend county and municipal boundaries.
Proposition 62 was a California ballot proposition on the November 2, 2004 ballot. It failed to pass with 5,119,155 (46.1%) votes in favor and 5,968,770 (53.9%) against.
California Democratic Party v. Jones, 530 U.S. 567 (2000), was a case in which the United States Supreme Court held that California's blanket primary violates a political party's First Amendment freedom of association.
An open primary is a primary election that does not require voters to be affiliated with a political party in order to vote for partisan candidates. In a traditional open primary, voters may select one party's ballot and vote for that party's nomination. As in a closed primary, the highest voted candidate in each party then proceeds to the general election. In a nonpartisan blanket primary, all candidates appear on the same ballot and the two highest voted candidates proceed to the runoff election, regardless of party affiliation. The constitutionality of this system was affirmed by the Supreme Court of the United States in Washington State Grange v. Washington State Republican Party in 2008, whereas a partisan blanket primary was previously ruled to be unconstitutional in 2000. The arguments for open primaries are that voters can make independent choices, building consensus that the electoral process is not splintered or undermined by the presence of multiple political parties.
A nonpartisan blanket primary is a primary election in which all candidates for the same elected office run against each other at once, regardless of the political party. Partisan elections are, on the other hand, segregated by political party. Nonpartisan blanket primaries are slightly different from most other elections systems with two rounds/a runoff, also known as "jungle primaries" , in a few ways. The first round of a nonpartisan blanket primary is officially the "primary." Round two is the "general election." Round two must be held, even if one candidate receives a majority in the first round.
The exhaustive ballot is a voting system used to elect a single winner. Under the exhaustive ballot the elector casts a single vote for their chosen candidate. However, if no candidate is supported by an overall majority of votes then the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and a further round of voting occurs. This process is repeated for as many rounds as necessary until one candidate has a majority.
Elections in California are held to fill various local, state and federal seats. In California, regular elections are held every even year ; however, some seats have terms of office that are longer than two years, so not every seat is on the ballot in every election. Special elections may be held to fill vacancies at other points in time. Recall elections can also be held. Additionally, statewide initiatives, legislative referrals and referendums may be on the ballot.
Initiative 872 was a 2004 ballot initiative that replaced the open primary being used in Washington state with a top-two nonpartisan blanket primary. It was challenged in court up to the US Supreme Court, which upheld the top-two primary in Washington State Grange v. Washington State Republican Party.
Instant-runoff voting (IRV), also known as plurality-with-elimination or the alternative vote (AV) in certain countries, is an ordinal voting system that modifies plurality voting to repeatedly eliminate the last-place finisher and reassigning their votes until only one candidate is left. In the United States, IRV is sometimes mistakenly conflated with ranked-choice voting (RCV).
Proposition 14 is a California ballot proposition that appeared on the ballot during the June 2010 state elections. It was a constitutional amendment that effectively transformed California's non-presidential elections from first-past-the-post to a nonpartisan blanket primary. The proposition was legislatively referred to voters by the State Legislature and approved by 54% of the voters. It consolidated all primary elections for a particular office into an election with one ballot that would be identical to all voters, regardless of their party preferences. The two candidates with the most votes in the primary election would then be the only candidates who would run in the general election, regardless of their party affiliation.
STAR voting is an electoral system for single-seat elections. The name stands for "Score then Automatic Runoff", referring to the fact that this system is a combination of score voting, to pick two finalists with the highest total scores, followed by an "automatic runoff" in which the finalist who is preferred on more ballots wins. It is a type of cardinal voting electoral system.
A top-four primary or top-four ranked-choice voting is an election method using a nonpartisan blanket primary as the first step.
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