The California Independent Voters Project hopes to qualify a new initiative for the California ballot, which would eliminate public elections for political party office. The initiative would also alter the presidential primary. The first draft of the initiative would provide for a presidential primary very similar to that used in California in 2000, which was a blanket presidential primary. All presidential candidates ran on the same primary ballot and all voters got that same ballot. In 2000, election officials kept a separate tally of how the registered voters of each party voted in that blanket presidential primary. The new initiative would provide the same service, but would require political parties to pay the cost of keeping the separate tally. If parties didn’t want to pay for the separate tally, they would still be free to use the results to choose delegates to their national conventions based on the overall state totals, not just the results from members of their own party.
In the 2000 California Republican presidential primary, George W. Bush defeated John McCain, whether one looked at only the vote of the registered Republicans, or all the voters. Among all voters, Bush beat McCain 2,168,466 to 1,780,570. Among registered Republicans, Bush beat McCain 1,725,162 to 988,706.
In the 2000 California Democratic presidential primary, Al Gore beat Bill Bradley, whether one looked at only the vote of the registered Democrats, or all the voters. Among all voters, Gore beat Bradley 2,609,950 to 642,654. Among registered Democratic voters, Gore beat Bradley 2,155,321 to 482,882.
Concerning elections for political party office, states that give party members a chance to vote for party officers, besides California, are Arizona, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, New York, Ohio, Oregon, South Dakota, Texas, and Wyoming. In these states, not all qualified parties necessarily use primary elections to elect party officers (for instance, in Georgia, only Democrats do this; Republicans don’t).
It seems somewhat perverse that opponents of political parties decry that the parties are controlled by “party bosses”, and yet in the California instance, those same opponents of political parties want to deprive rank-and-file members of those parties of their chance to elect party officers. On the other hand, eliminating such elections would save tax dollars.
