See this newspaper story about the California legislative race in the 39th Assembly district in the San Fernando Valley portion of Los Angeles County. The incumbent Democratic Assemblyman, Raul Bocanegra, who enjoyed a 39 point lead in the June primary over his opponent Patty Lopez, lost to her in November.
California rotates names of candidates within each Assembly district. For a statewide race, that gives every candidate the top spot on the ballot in some parts of the state, and all candidates are treated equally. But for a solitary Assembly race, one candidate will enjoy the top spot throughout the district. The article explains why it appears that Bocanegra would not have lost if he had been in the top spot on the ballot. Thanks to AroundtheCapitol for the link.
UPDATE: see this story, which has evidence of ballot order affecting other same-party California races as well. Thanks to Rick Hasen for that link.
Why don’t these Political Analysis “Experts” work to bring justice in California by advocating for doing away with the so-called Top Two, thereby allowing the 3rd parties and Independents to fully participate in the electoral process in California?
As an old saying goes, some people can’t see the forest for the trees.
Do we know what the ballots actually looked like? I am dubious about an English-only ballot in Los Angeles.
The district is about evenly split between two Board of Equalization districts. The random alphabet would reverse the order of candidates between the two districts (Runner before Parker; Horton before Marshall) – but the rotation is applied based on assembly districts within the larger district.
That is, for statewide offices, the random alphabet determines the order for AD-1, it is rotated for AD-2, and rotated again for AD-3, etc. But for the BOE, the random alphabet would be applied to the lowest assembly district within the BOE district, and rotated within the district.
The assembly district is divided among 3 congressional districts, one of which had a No Party Preference candidate. And it is divided between two (or more senate districts), at least one of which had an odd number, and wasn’t on the ballot.
Was there a similar pattern on the first page? Would someone actually perceive the pattern? It is possible that some voters simply were looking for the Democrat, and voted for the first one they saw.
Lopez likely got considerable support from Republican voters. There was not a huge drop off between the other races and the AD race. And some of that may have been Democrats who didn’t know who to vote for. Mr.B’s ballot designation may have hurt him. Some voters will read “Assemblymember, District 39” as “Career Politician”
There were 3 Democrats on the primary ballot, and the 3rd place candidate endorsed Lopez, so your claim of a 39-percent lead is not accurate. Lopez would have been 3rd on the ballot.
In 2010, when Alarcon ran against Nr.B, both candidates were seen as proteges of different political machines. Mr.B used to be an aide to Alarcon when he was a city council member. When Alarcon was convicted of election fraud (for not having lived in his district), Mr.B was a prosecution witness. There is not going to be any love lost there.
You might recall when Ed Jew was elected Supervisor in SF, he didn’t campaign in the English-language media. He campaigned in Chinese-language newspapers and radio stations, and encouraged voters to vote for three Asian candidates, to prevent transfers to Ron Dudum.
The Lopez campaign would not have run ads in the Los Angeles Weekly.
Mr.B did not very actively campaign in the district. His web site promised in March that “news would be coming soon”, and which never came. He had a list of labor union endorsements, but any contributions he received were funneled to other campaigns.
And the primary vote, where Mr.B received 60% of the vote may itself had a skewed electorate. Remember why labor unions hate Top 2. Under a conventional segregated partisan primary system, they can direct their GOTV efforts at union members, telling them to vote, and who to vote for. Other Democratic voters will either not show up for the primary, or will vote more or less randomly. If you can get 20% of the electorate to vote for your candidate, the rest of the electorate has to go 50%-30% to defeat him.
In the general election, then all Democrats will turn out and vote for whoever is on the ballot.
But under Top 2, the labor unions differential turnout efforts can backfire, since it will result in a more Republican electorate (as happened in CA-31 in 2012, where most voters preferred a Republican candidate).
Ballot order may have got Patty Lopez from 49% to 51%. It almost certainly did not get her to 49% as the stories infer.
Top Two is actually a small step forward in voting reform.
Under Top Two, the primary is first-past-the-post (FPTP) and our Unity Coalition candidate Ron Gold [Republican] won that with 12.5%. In that system, anyone can win with a simple plurality and third parties can also randomly win when there is a split vote or too few challengers.
The the runoff is an innovative “pair-test”, which allows the voters the benefit if the simplicity of comparing two candidates. It also guarantees a winner with a simple majority of 50% plus one vote.
To go back to the previous system of plurality voting in both primary and runoff, would be a step back away from the concept of simple majority where a 50/50 tie tie is broken by one vote.
Plus the open primary is good because it encourages all parties’ candidates to appeal to all voters instead of just their own party/category.
Unfortunately, some miscreants will always cry foul over the most primitive reforms. It has really identified those who just want to fight and bring negativity to even the smallest of reforms. Had they instead turned their energy to organizing under Top Two, then they would potentially have more allies in coordinating with ever improved reforms.
Instead, we’ve seen a lot of time wasted, water under the bridge, over the past four years they’ve been making so much noise about how Top Two “[Not] allowing the 3rd parties and Independents to fully participate in the electoral process in California?”.
Top Two is similar to instant runoff voting (IRV) which also guarantees a simple majority in a win. But we never hear a peep against IRV. That’s because the whiners don’t bother understanding the math. As Bob Dylan wrote; “Know your song well before you start playing.”
Enough already. The majority of the voters have approved Top Two. It’s time to move on and present better ideas to the majority. But criticizing a small reform has been detrimental to those who are working hard to even far greater reforms.
Yes, campaigns have been damaged by those meddling with Top Two. In 2012, the Top Two should have been an open primary. But three third party chairs advocated to “modify” Top Two by prohibiting voters from crossing party lines to vote.
I know my name was on that ballot with the Libertarian Party POTUS names in the 2012 primary, and I think Roseanne Barr’s name may have also been on the ballot.
So there was damage (or potential damage) to my own campaign, and Roseanne’s too, and I was trying to unite the campaigns.
While some of us people have been busy building a unity team, we have seen other well-intentioned do-gooders who have been a little too busy busting up and splitting our team.
Enough is enough!
Today Rand Paul [Republican] was nominated to the USA Parliament’s “Presidential Debate Tea” by Honorable MP Ralph Hoffman [Republican].
Ralph nominates Ron’s son Rand Paul [Republican] for POTUS, and so now Rand Paul is also elected to our team of 52 POTUS candidates.
Ralph is also friends with Dennis Kucinich [Democratic], but at age 70, Ralph has slowed down a little these days.
Ralph is also good friends with MP Jim Doyle [Republican], MP Starchild [Libertarian] who both live in the SF Bat area where I met Ralph in 2007 at the state Libertarian Party convention.
I ran for chair and lost to Kevin Takenaga [Libertarian], who has been the LP state chair ever since.
I will be updating the vote totals later today and three new POTUS candidates have been elected:
http://usparliament.org/pdc.php