U.S. House Race in California Ends in a Tie for Second Place, So Three Candidates Will Be on November Ballot

Posted on by April 3, 2024

Votes have all been counted in the California March 5, 2024 primary in San Mateo and Santa Clara Counties, so it is now possible to know that there is a tie for second place in the U.S. House race, 16th district. No incumbent was running. Nine Democrats and two Republicans appeared on the primary ballot. Democrat Sam Licardo, a county supervisor, placed first with 38,489 votes. Evan Low, an Assemblymember, and Joe Simitian, a former Mayor of San Jose, each got 30,249 votes. They are also both Democrats. So three Democrats will be on the November ballot.

This is the second time the California top-two system has produced a tie for second place, with the result that three candidates qualified for November. The first instance was in 2016, in the 62nd Assembly race, when only a Democrat had appeared on the primary ballot, and two write-in candidates (a Republican and a Libertarian) had been write-in candidates in the primary and each got 32 write-in votes, so all three went into the November election.

In theory, in the current race, one of the candidates could ask for a recount, but that is not expected to happen, because whoever requested the recount would need to spend a lot of money on the recount.

Comments

U.S. House Race in California Ends in a Tie for Second Place, So Three Candidates Will Be on November Ballot — 22 Comments

  7. Somehow the SPAM TROLL ROBOT BRIBES Richard Winger with his subscription money and is thus allowed to post here. BAN the paper subscriptions and the SPAM TROLL ROBOT goes away.

  8. It’s probably getting its bribe money from automated spam bot phishing and blackmail scams.

  9. I would like to point out a correction – Simitian is the county supervisor and Liccardo is the former San Jose mayor.

  15. TROLL MORONS LOVE MINORITY RULE ELECTIONS –

    WITH EVEN WORSE MONARCHS/OLIGARCHS – LEGIS / EXEC / JUDIC
    —
    PR
    APPV
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    PENDING CONDORCET / APPV — RCV DONE RIGHT

  17. Do any other jurisdictions advance two candidates from a primary if they tie?

    Do any other jurisdictions leave candidates to pay for the recount when the votes are really close (or not allow a recount – very sketchy)?

  20. The monster AZ666, the one and only BAN troll moron, hates minorities and minority rights. He/she/it wants mob rule and lynch law, which is pure majority rule. Except when the Bolsheviks can’t win fair and square, which is when they cheat and only pretend to have a majority. That’s when making elections more complicated comes in handy for them.

  21. @AC,

    There are some states that have provisions for a tie in a runoff. They might refer to a First Primary, a Second Primary, and a Third Primary.

    Some states use a lottery for determining the winner in a tied general election. They would use a lottery to break other ties such as happened in California.

  22. California should use a Top-N where N is the smallest whole number such that the share of the votes for the Top N candidates is greater than N/(N+1).

    In CA-16, the Top 3 barely received a majority. The leader had 21.1%, and the second/third place 16.6%.

    Under Top-N 42 representatives would have been elected outright. There would have been 7 candidates advancing in CA-16 (5D and 2R), 5 candidates in CA-30 (4D and 1R), 4 in CA-1, 3 in CA-20, CA-22, and CA-47, and 2 in CA-9, CA-29, CA-35.

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