Veteran California Democratic campaign professionals Steven Maviglio and Mike Roth have begun working against California’s Proposition 14, the June 2010 ballot measure to set up a top-two election system in California. Maviglio is the editor of the blog California Majority Report. Roth was Communications Director for John Garamendi when Garamendi was California’s Lieutenant Governor. They are both based in Sacramento. They have set up a committee to raise money to defeat Proposition 14, and have a web page, www.noonproposition14.com. At this point it doesn’t have a great deal of content.
Click here to reach that Web site.
Why do you say it’s “sketchy”? I’ve always heard that term used to mean that it might be a scam or that it’s less than reputable.
Thanks, Trent, I re-worded it.
Which party hacks have the brain cells to detect P.R. and nonpartisan A.V. ??? — NO primaries are needed.
Ballot access via EQUAL nominating petitions.
#3 Public employee unions are opposed to the Proposition 14 reform because they can dominate the Democratic primaries. Of course they can’t campaign on that platform, and that is probably why their website is lacking in content.
No, their website is low on content because it is brand new. There is plenty of good content against Prop. 14; just look at http://www.stoptoptwo.org!
Weren’t there explicit provisions in Proposition 62 (you were holding up the voter’s pamphlet before the Escondido Democrats) that said if a voter was affiliated with a non-qualified party, he would have “No Party”? Abel Maldonado could have reused that language, but he did not in SB 6.
You and Mark Brown complain about the Mississippi closing at 5 pm, and yet are willing to make up rules based on nothing that is in the actual language of SB 6.
#5 Once again, if the unions dominate the Democratic primaries, that is the choice of independent voters who don’t vote in them. Furthermore, I have a hard time believing that the health insurance companies supporting Prop 14 are The People, while the unions opposing it are The Special Interests.
Campaign committees that are set up as mechanisms for spending contributions from large organizations sometimes have minimal websites (or even no website at all) because they aren’t trying to raise money from individual donors.
#5: So now the “top two open primary”– or whatever you, Ahnuld, and (Dis)Abel are calling it now– is a “reform”?
This concept was first rejected by 58.2% of California voters in 1915. Back then, it was correctly called a nonpartisan election system.
California voters defeated a similar proposal in 2004, as Prop. 62 lost in 51 of the state’s 58 counties.
With such a track record, it’s very hard to think of this abomination as a “reform.”
#10 How about a CHANGE on the road to REAL Democracy ??? — i.e. the DOOM of the party hack regimes of plurality nominations and minority rule gerrymanders.
Like having Gen. U.S. Grant in April 1865 at Richmond, VA — DOOM for the EVIL party hack slavery regimes.
P.R. and A.V.
#11: The “top two” monstrosity LOST in California’s 1915 special referendum.
It also LOST in the 2004 California ballot initiative.
It was voted down in North Dakota in 1921, and it LOST in Oregon’s 2008 ballot initiative.
Referenda and initiatives are pure, direct democracy.
#8 Most Democrats don’t vote in the primary, especially if there are not top of the ballot races. If they vote in legislative races it may be more or less random. So a small group of highly organized voters can have an outsize effect.
#13 Prop 14 supporters are trying very hard not to understand this, but they already have methods to stop those big meanies on The Far Left and The Far Right from dominating the Democratic and Republican Parties.
They can get off their duffs and vote in the primary and encourage others to do the same. They can get out there and do the hard work of forming a Centrist Party, which actually shouldn’t be all that hard if they represent the vast majority of the voters. If the Greens, who they view as The Far Left Of The Far Left can get over 100,000 Californians to register Green, then it should be easy to get that many to register Centrist. All of this can be done without Prop 14’s disenfranchisement of third parties in the general election.
#14 So why don’t the public employee unions say that on their anti-Prop 14 web site?
“We like it quite fine that not many voters vote in the party primaries, because that means our union can control the Democratic nominations, and then in the general election the others will follow along like sheep. Though some have suggested that we should shed faux-crocodile tears over the minor parties and independent candidates, we don’t really care about them. Vote NO on Prop 14”.
That would be content that they could post on their web site, but it might not be the impression they are trying to project.
#14: They can get out there and do the hard work of forming a Centrist Party, which actually shouldn’t be all that hard if they represent the vast majority of the voters.
Exactly. What ought to make it even easier is the fact that Prop 14 is being bankrolled by some of the largest businesses in the state. They have the resources. But they don’t want to undermine the two party system, just control it better.
#15 Why aren’t Prop 14 supporters telling independents that they can vote in the Democratic and Republican primaries?
“We want to rig the election system so that centrists will win, instead of doing the work of taking over the Democratic or Republican Parties, or starting our own Centrist Party. We want independents to think that they’re being disenfranchised so that they’ll vote for Prop 14. We’ll argue that we’re helping third parties out of one side of our mouths, while we tell them that they don’t really matter and should become special interest groups out the other side.”
That would be content that they could post on their web site, but it might not be the impression they are trying to project.
#12 Washington lost many battles in 1775-1781.
But — DOOM for the monarchy party hacks.
The Union Army lost many battles in 1861-1865.
But — DOOM for the slavery party hacks.
P.R. and App.V. = TOTAL DOOM for the party hacks – the WAR for REAL Democracy continues.
#17 Independent voters in California can not vote in both the Democratic and Republican primaries, and they can’t vote for other candidates.
Proposition 14 simply lets voters vote for the candidate of their choice. Anything else is bait and switch.
#19: California independents have more options on primary day than do registered party members.
In the “top two open primary,” voters can vote for the candidate of their choice in the preliminary round, the purpose of which is to winnow the field to two candidates. No one can be elected to office in the first round.
In the second round, voters are limited to two choices, which will almost always be one Republican and one Democrat, two Republicans, OR two Democrats. So a voter whose favorite candidate is eliminated in the first round must choose between the “lesser of the evils” in the final, deciding election.
And a California voter may change his registration as late as 15 days before the primaries.
#20 “California independents have more options on primary day than do registered party members.”
Prisoners in a minimum security prison may have more freedom than those in a maximum security prison. They are still in prison.
In the Top 2 Open Primary every voter may support the candidate of their choice for each office. The two candidates with the most support among the entire electorate advance to the general election.
At the general election, all voters are free to reconsider between the two candidates. Perhaps their favored candidate, who was eliminated will have made an endorsement.
It is certainly possible that both candidates that advance to the general election will both be of the same race, or sex, or occupation. If someone doesn’t like lawyers, they may see the general election with two attorneys as a choice between the “lesser of the evils”.
Proponents of Prop. 14 are very coy about whether they either think political parties are good organizations in general, or bad organizations. I am hoping that frequent commenter Jim Riley will express his opinion about parties.
A historian analyzed both sides in the U.S. Civil War, and concluded that although the north and the confederacy had very similar Constitutions and election laws, the big difference in elections between them was that the North had partisan elections, and the South had non-partisan elections. The historian studies this and concluded that the North had an advantage over the South because it had political parties. This is not an obvious conclusion. One might have thought that the North was handicapped by having a vigorous Democratic Party, which wanted to make peace and let the south leave. But, the historian found that the partisan system made the north’s government able to function better than the confederacy’s government.
#22 In the oral arguments for Foster v Love, Louisiana Attorney General Ieyoub argued that Louisiana’s open primary was so novel, that Congress could not have anticipated it when they set the uniform election date for US representatives in 1872, and that Louisiana could, if it wanted, hold the primary in July and the runoff in August.
The Love lawyer pointed out, correctly, that Louisiana’s system was closer to what Congress and the public were accustomed to in 1872, than the partisan primary systems used in other states.
Of course, there were not-government printed ballots back then. But there were parties and they were free to support candidates. But it would be laughable if a voter could only vote for some candidates and not others. So in effect, the Louisiana open primary system facilitated victory for the North in the Civil War.
In 1845, when the Crawford County, Pennsylvania Democratic party introduced their primary election they were simply replacing the primary convention system that they had previously used. Under that system, Democrats in each township would meet and elect delegates to a county convention that would choose the Democratic candidates for the general election. Under the primary election, Democrats at the township meetings would vote for the candidate that they favored, and their votes rather than their delegates would be sent to the county convention to be totaled. Not all township parties agreed with the system, arguing that there was no better place than the general election for settling intraparty disputes. Of course, the Crawford County Democratic Primary was outside government regulation, and was abandoned not too long afterward.
In the challenge by the Mississippi Democratic Party of the primary system used there, the brief claimed that the the party executive committee was a quasi-governmental organization.
You have the case of Rosalind Kurita in Tennessee, where the State conducted and financed the primary election, combining it with nonpartisan elections, and then letting the Democratic State Executive Committee throwing out the results because they didn’t like the winner.
You have Eugene Platt trying to game the system in South Carolina because of the confusing laws that treat political parties as both private organizations and public agencies.
In 1912, voters in California could not cast a vote for the (presidential electors) for William Howard Taft, the sitting President because of the partisan primary system (except as a write-in).
So the problem with partisan primary elections is not the political parties per se, but that the government has given them a role as a mediator of elections, interposing the parties between the voters and the candidates.
Proposition 14 clearly recognizes a role for political parties in elections as a participant. It even explicitly recognizes their right to participate in non-partisan elections. It distributes sample ballots of the parties to voters at government expense.
But it doesn’t maintain a system where a voter is restricted to only voting for certain candidates, and not others.
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