John Myers, Los Angeles Times Bureau Chief in Sacramento, has this analysis of California’s top-two system. There is one riveting piece of news in the article that I had missed. For the fourth time, it appears likely that the majority party in a California race has been disenfranchised. In the Fourth State Senate district, a strongly Republican district, six Republicans and two Democrats ran in the June 7, 2022 primary. The two Democrats appear to have placed first and second, leaving no Republican on the November 2022 ballot. The law bans write-in votes in general elections for congress and partisan state office, so there is nothing Republicans can do to win this seat in November.

The Fourth District has the fourth-highest Republican registration of all 40 State Senate districts, and its part of California has been represented in the State Senate by Republicans continuously for over fifty years. Here is a link to the election returns for this district. One of the Republican candidates in this week’s primary in this district is former Congressman George Radanovich, who served in Congress 1994-2010 and never came close to losing. He did not run for re-election in 2010.

The other notable point about the article is that it misleads the reader. It says that before the top-two system was in place, the Democrats and Republicans generally did not let independent voters vote in their congressional and state office primaries. The California press has consistently misreported this point. For all congressional and state office primaries from 1998 through the beginning of the top-two system in 2011, independent voters were allowed to vote in Republican and Democratic primaries. For those who don’t believe this, google “History of Political Parties That Have Adopted Party Rules Regarding No Preference Voters”, which takes one to the Secretary of State’s website. Thanks to Eric Wong for the link.