In the last two days, two very well-informed and sophisticated individuals, both of whom support California’s top-two system, have published assertions that California had a closed primary before the top-two system was implemented in 2011. The February 14 Los Angeles Times has this letter to the editor from Bill Bloomfield, asserting that California had a closed primary before 2011. Bloomfield is a very wealthy, politically active individual who ran a strong campaign for Congress from Los Angeles County in 2012. Scroll down to see his letter. UPDATE: to his credit, he sent me an e-mail shortly after this post was put up, saying he should have said in his letter the pre-2011 primaries were “semi-closed.”
Fox & Hounds, a well-known California blog for politics, ran an article on February 12, asserting that California had a closed primary before 2011. The article is by Marty Wilson, an official of the California Chamber of Commerce.
All Democratic and Republican primaries for congress and partisan state office were open to independent voters, in each election 2001-2010. But, proponents of the top-two system have spread misinformation about this so widely that even the three judges on the State Court of Appeals got it wrong in their January 29, 2015 opinion upholding the top-two system in Rubin v Padilla.
They should refer to them as “segregated partisan primaries”, and include a footnote that independent voters could if the political party deigned to permit them to request a ballot.
None of the political parties in ‘Rubin v Padilla’ permitted independent voters to vote in their segregated partisan primaries between 2002 and 2012.
It is true that the Democratic, Republican, American Independent, and Natural Law parties did permit independent voters to request a ballot in some of their primaries during that period.
Again – Ballot access stuff has been a WAR activity for decades and decades since 1968.
Part of any WAR is LIES — intentional or merely negligent — by the EVIL robot party hacks involved.
How about some folks who know the facts call the folks making the LIES to be E-V-I-L deceptive L-I-A-R-S ???
I’m happy that the American Independent Party continues to allow independents to vote in the primary under the registration of “American Independent.” As long as they will keep their “participation”in this Open Primary, this will keep encouraging people to register as “American Independent,” regardless of whether they think they are registering as an independent with a lower case “i.”
A group called “Don’t be AIPrl Fooled” sent out, (as I understand) some 200,000 email attempting to get these AIP registrants to see the error of their way. It appeared to flop. The AIP registration continues to grow. The AIP registration will top 500,000 by the time of the 2016 Elections.
CA 2014 Top 2 primary —
ONE result —
24.2 (repeat 24.2) percent of the total voters in the general election de facto elected the 41 Assembly Donkey hacks who got the lowest votes of the 80 total Assembly member — due in part to NOT having 1 D and 1 R in 19 of the 80 rigged pack/crack gerrymander districts.
[In non-top 2 States the minority rule percentage is around 30 percent]
The ANTI-Democracy minority rule percentage will get a bit worse with each gerrymander election until the next gerrymander takes effect in 2022.
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P.R. and nonpartisan App.V.