Governor Terry Branstad suggested at his regular weekly press conference this morning that he is open to changing state law to provide for run-off elections where no candidate wins at least 35 percent of the vote in a primary. Under current law, a Democratic or Republican special nominating convention is required if no candidate hits the 35 percent threshold in the primary for a state or federal office. You can listen to the audio from Branstad’s press conference at Radio Iowa. He starts talking about this issue around the 16-minute mark.

At least seven GOP candidates are running for Iowa’s open U.S. Senate seat, with more considering, and five Democrats are running in the first Congressional district. I would not rule out a clear winner emerging in both contests next June, but I also would not be surprised to see a convention decide at least one nomination, especially in the Senate race.

Eleven states, mostly in the South, currently provide for run-off elections in come primaries. Historically, the system has been seen as a way to prevent African-American candidates from winning primaries in the former Confederacy, although that may be a myth. I can see the case for holding a run-off election between the top two vote-getters in a crowded primary, rather than letting a small number of party insiders choose the nominee at a convention.

Share your own thoughts in this thread.

UPDATE: I did not realize that Republican Party of Iowa Chair A.J. Spiker had his own reform ideas for the system. Details are after the jump.

Kathie Obradovich’s latest column for the Des Moines Register contains an amazing proposal from Iowa GOP Chair Spiker:

The cost of campaigns is one reason GOP chairman Spiker wants the option for the party to choose nominating conventions instead of a primary election. “In the GOP over the last 20 years or so, whoever raised the most money in the GOP won the nomination,” he said. A nominating convention process allows party donors to focus resources on the general election.

The party could expand participation in the convention, perhaps even allowing any registered Republican to qualify as a delegate. He said he thinks delegates will do a better job of vetting candidates than primary voters.

Spiker doesn’t necessarily want to get rid of primary elections, but he says he doesn’t like combining an election with the potential for a nominating convention. That forces candidates to prepare for two wildly different types of campaigns. He said he’d like the state party to decide each cycle, at least a year in advance, how it will nominate its candidates. If the party chooses a primary, he said, then a candidate should have to achieve a majority vote – 50 percent plus one – to win the nomination outright.

There would be an uproar if the Iowa GOP declared a convention rather than a primary for a major office. It’s also likely that a convention would produce a weaker nominee: more extreme and not battle-tested from campaigning around the state during a primary.

If Virginia Republicans used a primary rather than a nominating convention, they might have won the recent gubernatorial election. I’m still amazed a Democrat as unappealing as Terry McAuliffe was able to eke out a win there.