Michael Russnow is a California scriptwriter and recently an officer with the Writers Guild of America. He has worked on many well-known television series, and some films, and is a Democrat and a former congressional aide. He has this commentary on California’s top-two “open primary” system here.

He mentions the California June 2012 primary ballot, which lists 24 candidates for U.S. Senate. Having that many candidates in the primary season is not unusual in California. In 2010, there were 23 candidates on the various primary ballots for Governor. But, in 2010, no California ballot was crowded, because those 23 gubernatorial candidates were distributed on the separate primary ballots of six different political parties. The top-two system creates one large primary ballot for all seven of California’s qualified parties, so the system gives the appearance of lots of candidates.

California has fewer legislative candidates in 2012 than it did in 2010.

On May 12, the gubernatorial nominees of the Indiana Democratic, Republican, and Libertarian Parties debated each other. See this story.

Lawrence Lessig, prominent law professor and author of several books on campaign finance reform, has this Atlantic Monthly column, urging his readers to vote for Buddy Roemer in the Americans Elect nomination system. Lessig says that his previous support of Americans Elect has garnered an angry reaction from many of his readers, who claim that the Americans Elect nominee might “spoil” President Obama’s chances for re-election, or Mitt Romney’s chances.

Lessig responds to this argument by pointing out that about a week ago, Roemer said he would withdraw from the election if he can’t win. In this recent column, Lessig is more specific. He says a few days before the election, Roemer would ask his voters not to vote for him, if polls show he can’t win. Lessig points out that, in a sense, the U.S. does have an informal version of Instant Runoff Voting. The polls can be considered to be the “first round”.

The problem with the Roemer maneuver is that in many states, early voting now means that elections are conducted with a month of voting, not just one day as in the past. Furthermore, not every voter would learn that Roemer had asked voters not to vote for him. It would be impossible to withdraw Roemer’s name from the ballot, just a few days before November 6, 2012.