The California Independent Voters Project hopes to qualify a new initiative for the California ballot, which would eliminate public elections for political party office. The initiative would also alter the presidential primary. The first draft of the initiative would provide for a presidential primary very similar to that used in California in 2000, which was a blanket presidential primary. All presidential candidates ran on the same primary ballot and all voters got that same ballot. In 2000, election officials kept a separate tally of how the registered voters of each party voted in that blanket presidential primary. The new initiative would provide the same service, but would require political parties to pay the cost of keeping the separate tally. If parties didn’t want to pay for the separate tally, they would still be free to use the results to choose delegates to their national conventions based on the overall state totals, not just the results from members of their own party.
In the 2000 California Republican presidential primary, George W. Bush defeated John McCain, whether one looked at only the vote of the registered Republicans, or all the voters. Among all voters, Bush beat McCain 2,168,466 to 1,780,570. Among registered Republicans, Bush beat McCain 1,725,162 to 988,706.
In the 2000 California Democratic presidential primary, Al Gore beat Bill Bradley, whether one looked at only the vote of the registered Democrats, or all the voters. Among all voters, Gore beat Bradley 2,609,950 to 642,654. Among registered Democratic voters, Gore beat Bradley 2,155,321 to 482,882.
Concerning elections for political party office, states that give party members a chance to vote for party officers, besides California, are Arizona, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, New York, Ohio, Oregon, South Dakota, Texas, and Wyoming. In these states, not all qualified parties necessarily use primary elections to elect party officers (for instance, in Georgia, only Democrats do this; Republicans don’t).
It seems somewhat perverse that opponents of political parties decry that the parties are controlled by “party bosses”, and yet in the California instance, those same opponents of political parties want to deprive rank-and-file members of those parties of their chance to elect party officers. On the other hand, eliminating such elections would save tax dollars.
Abolish all timebomb caucuses, primaries and conventions — which only produce extremist candidates.
The party hacks can have their own privately paid meetings and/or a mail ballot system to pick party hack leaders.
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P.R. and nonpartisan App.V.
ONE election day.
This would be good for states like Montana that elect party officers in the primary election. In 2014 Montana voters will have a chance to vote for another one of those Top Two bills, but if the top two were to pass 2016 ballots will be confusing with elections for party office,President and other offices on just one ballot, in the primary. The state will have to spend lots of tax payer dollars just to educate voters. And you can imagine many ballots will not count because of the confusion and miss marked ballots.
California should adopt the corporate governance paradigm.
California does not tell corporations what products they should produce or services they should provide, or even require that they be profitable. But it does require them to have officers: a president who is responsible for the corporation as a whole; a secretary who is responsible for business records; and a treasurer who is responsible for financial records and reporting. California requires a corporation to have periodic meetings open to its shareholders, and for the shareholders to ultimately control its governance.
Now consider political parties, which for our purposes are groups of voters registered with a political party. California should not care what their platform is, or which candidates they support, or whether they focus on issues or candidates, etc. But it does have an interest in ensuring that the voters who register with the party, ultimately control the party.
That does not require that the State of California to tell the parties when they hold a state convention, or when or how they elect their party officers, let alone actually conduct those activities for the parties. The current system may lead party officers to actually think they are part of the state government.
California could rip out the existing Division 7 of the Elections Code, and instead require that a recognized party have:
1. A name.
2. By-laws.
3. Officers, including minimally, a president, secretary, and treasurer.
4. A state executive committee, elected by party registrants.
5. A biennial state convention.
6. Responsible financial reporting.
Because California counties actually conducts election, there might be a requirement for a person to represent the party in each county. Because of the role parties play in governance, there may also need to be requirements for a heightened openness in party matters.
California might also facilitate communication with party registrants by sending out a notice of party meetings once a year.
This level of organization doesn’t require many registered voters. California could set the level of recognition to some small number, perhaps 100 or 200, and then switch to using the petition method exclusively for qualifying a new party. If there are enough signatures, the registrations would be switched. Otherwise, voters would be restricted to registering with a recognized party. If they indicated something else, the registrar would simply inform the voter.
I doubt that there is anything in the current initiative that would preclude such a system. For that matter, there is nothing in the current California Constitution that would preclude such a system.
Washington has a Top 2 system, which elects party officers in the primary. It doesn’t create confusion. A voter who votes in the party officer section of the ballot is considered to have affiliated with that party. In addition, I suspect that so few precinct officer races are contested, that it matters that much at all.
Montana’s presidential primary is too late, and its regular primary is too early. It should move the primary to September, and either drop the presidential primary or move it earlier in the year.
Montana’s presidential primary is the same as the regular primary, the first Tuesday in June. The Republicans tried a presidential caucus one year, but they found out it was too expensive, so they went back to a tax payer funded presidential primary.
That is precisely the problem with Montana’s primary it is held on the same day.
The presidential primary is too late to have any effect on the national nomination. It also violates Democratic national party rules, since it is secret which primary a voter votes for. Marc Racicot could have voted in the Democratic primary in 2004, and no one would have known it.
And the state primary is too early for a November general election. Move or drop the presidential primary, and the regular primary is no problem, even with party offices still on the ballot. Or simply put the precinct offices on a separate sheet of paper. You could even make a write-in, and give voters a blank sheet of paper.
Actually Montana has a straight party ticket so voters can only vote party line Marc Rocicot was a former Republican Governor and if Democrats voted for him in the primary, then they voted on the Republican ticket. You can only vote for one ticket. In 2008 Montana mattered, since the race between Obama and Clinton was pretty close and Montana’s 3 votes made a difference that year. Obama came to Montana twice and Bill Clinton came out for Hillery. But most times Montana presidential primaries don’t matter much in the national scope except to choose delegates to the national conventions.
Marc Racicot was George W Bush’s campaign manager in 2004. Assuming he was still registered in Montana in 2004, he would have been handed both a Democratic and Republican ballot. He could have gone into the voting booth marked the Democratic ballot and deposited it in the ballot box and discarded the other ballot.
As he left the polling place, a reporter might have shouted, “Who’d you vote for?”, He might have smiled and replied, “Who do you think? John Kerry.” Everyone would laugh. But who would know whether he was kidding or not.