The 2012 Montana primary was not a poster child for the blessings of a plurality wins electoral system.
Seven of ten Democratic voters wanted someone other than Kim Gillan as their nominee for Congress. Two of three Republican voters wanted someone other than Rick Hill as their nominee for governor.
In Flathead County:
These results are neither an endorsement of majority rule nor a mandate for the winning candidates. They undermine the political legitimacy of the primary’s winners and of the government in which they may serve. The problem is more acute in the executive branch, and in administrative-legislative bastard hybrids like Montana’s county commissions.
That political legitimacy cannot be restored with a top-two primary system, the queer beast that Washington and California adopted. A two-two primary is simply a plurality system without separate party ballots. Every candidate for a particular office is on one ballot. It’s actually less democratic than a plurality wins partisan ballot system.
The solution is some kind of runoff system that produces a winner backed by a majority of the votes. I think instant runoff elections are the best solution, and I wish that Montana’s political parties and good government organizations would get behind it so that the kind of embarrassments described above never will happen again.