On December 2, the Schwarzenegger Institute held a forum on California’s 2016 U.S. Senate race. The Schwarzenegger Institute is headquartered at the University of Southern California. Very few academics believe that the California top-two system has functioned the way it was intended to, but academics who support the top-two system are mostly associated with USC.
The 2016 Senate race gave California voters only two candidates (and no write-in space). Both candidates were Democrats.
Here is a description of the meeting. The panelists included the campaign managers for each of the two Democratic candidates. One the interesting facts brought out at the forum is that 25 of the 26 counties with Republican voter registration pluralities voted in November for Kamala Harris instead of Loretta Sanchez.
Proponents of top-two like to say that Loretta Sanchez was mode “moderate” than Kamala Harris, and therefore Republicans had the opportunity to vote for the Democrat who was more friendly to Republican ideas. Top-two supporters predicted that Sanchez, or perhaps both Democrats, would move to the center during the general election campaign, to try to win Republican votes. But, according to a member of the audience, the panelists said that the opposite occurred. During the general election campaign, both candidates moved to the left.
The only way to have candidates be more moderate and civil in campaigning is to move to Ranked choice voting and then use either Instant Runoff or some sort of Condorcet method
+1
How about a genius math panel about the minority rule gerrymander math in the USA regime and ALL 50 State regimes ???
P.R. and nonpartisan App.V. — pending Condorcet math.
Brandon…. Single-Transferable would be more ideal. The senate should expand to 14 senators per state. 11 are elected, 3 are appointed. 9 of the 11 senators would serve staggered 6 year terms. 3 of those 4 are elected using Single-Transferable Voting; the 4th is appointed by the state legislature of the corresponding state.
The remaining 2 senators would serve staggered 4 years terms (such that 1 senator is up every two years), and they have to run in an open non-partisan election using Instant Run-Off, and they would be prohibited from caucusing with any party other than a non-partisan caucus.
The house should 1) be expanded to a minimum of 1600 seats, and 2) use mixed-member proportional with Single-Transferable for district elections, electing up to 6 representatives from a district, but no less than 3. And the remaining seats would be filled by a state-wide party vote. There would be an obligation to have a minimum of 25% of the seats each state gets to be elected through a party vote, and no more than 50% of the seats per state would be through a party vote. Each state would get a minimum of 4 representatives, such that they could have at minimum 1 district with 3 seats and 1 seat filled by state-wide proportional vote.
The CA math is almost done for Nov 2016.
What percentage of the actual voters did NOT vote for either Senate robot party HACK ???
Will the CA Donkeys split into left-left (openly communist) versus mere left gangs ???
Region played a significant role. Harris is not perceived as a southerner, despite moving to Los Angeles after her marriage. Northern counties generally favored Harris, even when they voted for Trump. Harris’s political career to date has been as DA and AG, and voters may have seen her as the law and order candidate in contrast to crooked Hillary.
In the counties with Republic registration pluralities, Harris and Sanchez together received twice as many votes as Clinton. Under the model apparently being advanced by some academics, Clinton voters went out and voted for both Harris and Sanchez.
In Kern County for example,
Clinton 98,689
Harris 98,526
Sanchez 97,689
If all the Clinton voters voted for both Harris and Sanchez, they would have had to vote twice. But if they had, Clinton would have received twice as many votes. Besides voting twice is illegal.
So it appears that some of the Clinton voters voted for Harris and some voted for Sanchez. And roughly equal numbers of non-Clinton numbers also split between the two candidates.
In the primary, Harris ran slightly ahead of Sanchez in Kern County (54:46) so Clinton supporters may have voted slightly for Harris. This would mean that non-Clinton supporters preferred Sanchez, but only slightly.
Sanchez may have been tactically naive in not attempting to attract Republican support. About 13% of presidential voters skipped the senate race. Had they all voted for Sanchez, the senate race would have been about 55:45, rather than 60:40. Had she received a slightly larger share of Republicans who did vote in the senate race, she would be senator elect now.
Harris had the advantage of having been elected to statewide office, while Sanchez had only been elected to a congressional district with less than 2% of the state population. San Francisco, where Harris had been elected to countywide office, has more population than a congressional district.
Sanchez would have the negative among Republican voters of having defeated Bob Dornan. While appealing particularly to Hispanic voters may have been effective in her congressional district, it was less so in a statewide race. Harris had previously run for local office under her married name of Brixey, and had switched parties to run against Dornan, so could be perceived as being unreliable or insincere.
She has repeatedly considered running for other offices, and could have been seen as overly ambitious. While only four years older than Harris, some voters may have perceived her as trying to look younger. Harris appears to have a more natural, unforced beauty.
Sanchez’s loss is more likely due to flaws or weaknesses in Sanchez, rather than flaws in Top 2.
Is Top 2 akin to a literacy test, and therefore illegal?
A seal could be trained to slap the letter ‘D’, but that does not exhibit intelligence or literacy. If confronted with a Top 2 ballot the seal would not know how to vote.
Thus a Top 2 ballot requires a demonstration of literacy or intelligence to vote. Even if a sophisticated voter wanted to vote for every ‘D’ candidate, they could not, and might even be confused and vote for too many candidates.
This is just another legal theory that opponents of Top 2 might want to pursue in their never-ending slew of lawsuits.
Save the taxpayers millions of dollars by abolishing the primary all together and use Proportional Representation in the general election. Because people are so hung up on individualism I recommend that candidates qualify for the ballot as partisan or independent candidates. That an open list be presented so that voters may vote for any candidate listed. If the candidate is on a partisan list the vote would also be a vote for the party. Then in a ten member district if a party or independent candidate receives 10% of the vote that candidate orparty receives 10% of the seats,rather than none of them. And if a party receives 50% of the vote that party receives 50% of the seats, not all of them. That way we protect the majority and at the same time give voice and representation to the minorities.