Talk:Jungle primary

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[edit] Merger

This article absolutely needs to be merged, but not with blanket primary, which is a completely different thing. The key difference is that in a blanket primary, a voter must choose among candidates from the same party for a single office, though they can choose different parties for different offices. In a jungle primary, however, all parties' candidates for each office are listed together. Not the same at all, depsite the "also known as", which should have been removed.

However, the "jungle" primary has several names that do mean the same thing. "Louisiana primary" and "Cajun primary" redirect here; there should be a merger with run-off primary election under this title or "Louisiana primary" -- not run-off primary, which is an incredibly confusing term, as many states have primary run-off elections but only Louisiana has the so-called run-off primary. --SuperNova |T|C| 17:13, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Need to have correct taxonomy and titles

Political scientists classify American primary elections into four main types (actually, there are sub-types as well, depending upon how a voter is legally defined as "affiliated" -- registration, affirmation, etc.). A closed primary is one where voters affiliated with a particular party may select for all offices contested a nominee from choices of only that party. An open primary is one where voters regardless of party affiliation may select for all offices contested a nominee from choices of only one particular party. A blanket primary is one where voters regardless of affiliation may select for each office contested a nominee regardless of the nominee's affiliation, as long as only one choice is made per office. A nonpartisan blanket primary is one where candidates run in the same primary contest regardless of affiliation.

The latter describes the Louisiana system since 1975. In 20+ years in the profession until I saw this entry I never had encountered the term "jungle primary." It is not the proper name as used by those who study election systems, and should be replaced by the term, "nonpartisan blanket primary." Voteearlyvoteoften 14:44, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the informed input. I would support a merge/move to nonpartisan blanket primary, with a redirect from Louisiana primary (and this and the other terms, just because). Do any other states have such a system or is Louisiana the only one? --SuperNova |T|C| 00:58, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree that this article needs to be merged into blanket primary or that both be merged into "nonpartisan blanket primary". As far as I know, the term "jungle primary" was never meant to be anything other than an ironic, dispariging nickname for the process, not its official title. Rlquall 17:29, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

It would seem the most logical thing to do would be to make this article part of the "blanket primary" article, under a subsection called "non-partisan blanket primary," where the term "jungle primary" can be noted as an "also known as" (as well as possibly "Cajun primary," though that term doesn't seem to be as commonly used).

And to answer Supernova, yes, currently Lousiana is the only state to have this system, though other states used to have it, and it may be considered in other states, as is already noted in the "jungle primary" article. Troodon 07:24, 6 October 2006 (UTC)