The San Diego Union-Tribune has published “How California Can Keep Advantages of the Top Two Primary While Curing Its Defects”. Read it here.
The San Diego Union-Tribune has published “How California Can Keep Advantages of the Top Two Primary While Curing Its Defects”. Read it here.
NO primaries.
PR and AppV
Excellent OpEd, Richard.
IMO, those who believe that proportional representation can be implemented in the USA are delusional. For better or worse, an elected executive branch (President, Governor, other statewide officers) must be single winner elections. And because this is the united States, the state and federal legislatures will continue to be made up of single winner districts. To make the best of this reality, we need to make the best of what we’ve got, because the only other alternative would be to toss out Article I of the US Constitution which could only happen by revolution, which I strongly doubt will ever happen. (FWIW, I believe that the end will come with a whimper, then death, like Rome’s 16 centuries ago).
For single winner districts, I strongly favor ranked choice voting. However, I’ve changed my opinion about Condorcet vs. instant runoff tallying. My preference is this: if a Condorcet winner exists, that person wins the election. If no Condorcet winner exists, the instant runoff will determine the winner.
For those of you reading this – you are a unique group of citizens – your depth of understanding about elections is much deeper than most politicians, journalists and pundits, and is light years ahead of the general public. You need to rally around one solution and get folks elected to legislatures who will advocate for that solution. Without getting folks elected to make change, you might as well be posting comments on your refrigerator because without power exercised through elected representatives, nothing will change. All the the letters to the editor, phone calls, etc. won’t accomplish a thing.
There is a real chance for something good to happen in California now that top two has been shown to be a disaster. A group of folks needs to focus on electing California legislators who support some form of ranked choice voting. It can happen with patience and perseverance by a group of dedicated citizens.
After the coming SCOTUS gerrymander cases there will be lots more attention to
Pct Seats vs Pct Votes —
as is done in the UK, Canada, etc.
CA is 1 of the 18 States with voter petitions for State const amdts.
The other 32 may have to be liberated the very hard way
– See Union Army and Navy at work in 1861-1865.
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PR and AppV
The Op-Ed misrepresents the situation in Assembly District 76. The reason that no Democrat has ever appeared on the November election ballot is that no Democrat has ever appeared on the primary ballot. In 2012 three Republicans ran, Rocky Chavez and Sherri Hodge advanced from the primary and Chavez won in the general election. Given that the 2012 presidential race was a tossup district, it is likely that Chavez was elected on the basis of cross-over Obama voters. The district includes Camp Pendelton, and being a USMC Colonel was likely an advantage that it would not be in other areas of California. Top 2 worked.
In 2014 and 2016, only Chavez filed, but a Republican write-in candidate qualified for the general election ballot. Since Thomas Krouse appears to have run as an opponent of Sacramento, it is likely that his support was more from Republican voters. Chavez probably won Republican, Democratic, and independent voters. During his congressional campaign, union sleaze troll-bots ran ads attacking Chavez for having voted for the state budget and other issues that you’d figure that the unions would support.
Had Chavez run for re-election he would likely have easily won. There would not have been as many candidates running.
In the 2018 primary for an open seat, the two Democrat candidates had a majority of the vote, even though Democrats are less likely to show up for a primary, and having fewer candidates for a party means fewer total votes. While voters tend to concentrate on party, some vote based on name, sex, locality (a voter might vote for a city council member from their town, over a county supervisor from the next county, etc.) If there are five or six candidates from a party, some voters will vote based on non-partisan factors, increasing the apparent support for the party.
There was also the factor of the alleged sexual battery by the leading Republican candidate. The two Democrat candidates were women, and the issue would have resonated in San Diego because of ex-mayor Bob Filner. One of the two Democrats who advanced gave a shout out to MoveOn. Presumably this would be a negative among Republican and independent voters.
California could switch to a Top N primary where N, is the smallest number of candidates such that their collective share of the votes is N/(N+1) of the votes.
In general, N could be as small as one, such that a candidate who receives a majority of the vote (1/2 of the vote) would be elected. Until federal statute is changed, the minimum value for congressional elections would be two. Once they were made aware of this possibility, it is likely that the delegations from California, Washington, and Louisiana would also support change (this is about 1/6 of the House).
Campaign finance laws could be modified to permit contributions for Top N systems to be doubled. The real reason for earlier and earlier primaries is so that the campaign industry can have closer to full-time employment. If there is a March primary, fund raising begins in the odd-numbered years, in many cases to try to discourage competition. And then as soon as the primary is over, they can go back and hit donors for another contribution.
And there is no reason that the the primary could not be in September or October.
Under Top-N four gubernatoiral candidates would have advance to the general election: Newsom, Cox, Villaraigosa, and Chiang who collectively received 82.4% of the vote, which is greater than 4/5 of the total vote. In addition, it might be possible for additional candidates to qualify if they could coalesce their votes to be greater than the last qualified candidate. Any candidate outside the Top 2 could also withdraw.
Four Lieutenant Governor, 6 candidates, 3 Democrats and 3 Republicans, would advance.
Alex Padilla, Betty Yee would have been elected as Secretary of State and Controller since they received a majority of the vote.
For Treasurer, one Democrat and two Republicans would have advanced.
For Attorney General, one Democrat and one Republican would have qualified.
For Insurance Commissioner, one independent and one Democrat would advance.
Two candidates, Marshall Tuck and Tony Thurmond would have advanced in the Superintendent of Public Instruction race.
For US Senator, 15 candidates, 4 Democrats, 10 Republicans, and one Libertarian would advance. Additional candidates could qualify based on combining votes. For example, an independent or two could also advance.
For the four SBOE districts, between two and five candidates would advance: (1) DR, (2) DDR, (3) RDDDD, (4) RDRD.
For Congress, 38 Democrat and 8 Republican incumbents would have been re-elected outright.
The other districts would have between 2 and 9 candidates:
(8) R(Cook), RD
(10) R(Denham), DRDD
(31) D(Aguilar), R
(39) RDRDRRDDD (4R, 5D)
(48) R(Rohrbacher), DDR
(49) RDDDRR
(50) R(Hunter), DR