Use Elsewhere in The United States
The plan is also used in Texas and some other states in special elections, but not primaries. A notable example involved former United States Senator Phil Gramm, who in 1983 (while a member of the House of Representatives), after switching from the Democratic to the Republican Party, resigned his seat as a Democrat on January 5, then ran as a Republican for his own vacancy in a special election held on February 12, and won rather handily.
Alaska, like Washington state and California, used the similar blanket primary until 2000, when it was ruled unconstitutional. There was also an effort in Oregon to pass a similar law, but the Oregon Senate rejected it in May 2007 and it failed in a November 2008 referendum.
Likewise, other elections throughout the United States such as mayoral elections, local council elections, and school boards, etc. may operate as non-partisan or semi-non-partisan elections. Such examples include Mobile, Alabama city council and mayoral elections and the Fresno, California mayoral primary.
Read more about this topic: Nonpartisan Blanket Primary
Famous quotes containing the words united states, united and/or states:
“What the United States does best is to understand itself. What it does worst is understand others.”
—Carlos Fuentes (b. 1928)
“I have ever deemed it fundamental for the United States never to take active part in the quarrels of Europe. Their political interests are entirely distinct from ours. Their mutual jealousies, their balance of power, their complicated alliances, their forms and principles of government, are all foreign to us. They are nations of eternal war.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“A little group of willful men, representing no opinion but their own, have rendered the great government of the United States helpless and contemptible.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)