On December 3, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger spoke to the Silicon Valley Leadership Group/CEO Roundtable in San Jose. He urged the audience to contribute generously to the campaign to pass the “top-two open primary”, a ballot measure set for the June 2010 ballot. He said, “There will be only two real opponents to the open primary measure, Republicans and Democrats. But that’s where you come in. We all know that if we have the $20,000,000, we can win, because the parties will spend money against it.”

Back in 2004, when the same idea was on the California ballot, Schwarzenegger raised almost all of the money for the campaign for that measure. In 2004, it was defeated by the voters by a vote of 46%-54%. The biggest contributor in 2004 in favor of “top-two” was Countrywide Home Lending.

The Los Angeles Times carried this lengthy story about “top-two” in its November 27 issue. It quoted three individuals who are in favor of the proposal, Senator Abel Maldonado, former Senator Steve Peace, and Allan Hoffenblum, a campaign consultant for Republicans. It devoted 16 lines to quotations from them. The only person it quoted against “top-two” was Democratic Party state chair John Burton, but it only gave him 3 lines, and then it quoted Hoffenblum again saying Burton was being a hypocrite.

Neither the Los Angeles Times, or any other newspaper in California, has yet mentioned that the proposal (1) eliminates write-ins at the general election; (2) vastly increases the difficulty for a party to remain ballot-qualified; (3) shuts off all avenues to the November ballot that are later than mid-March of the election year; (4) treats candidates unequally in the June primary by letting some of them list a party preference but not letting others do so. The Los Angeles Times has rejected two attempts to get an op-ed printed to mention these points, saying “We’ve got too many pieces vying for too little space.” However, on December 3, the paper again ran a story in favor of top-two, by George Skelton, saying the system will elect more moderate legislators. Neither Skelton nor any other Los Angeles Times writer has ever presented any evidence in favor of this idea. Nor have they acknowledged that Political Scientist Thad Kousser studied the California legislature, and found that the legislature elected in the blanket primary didn’t behave any differently than legislative sessions elected under a normal system.

To read a letter sent to some leaders of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, by Richard Winger, on December 3, see here.

Rasmussen Poll releases results on how U.S. voters self-identify, every month. The poll released on December 1, 2009, shows: Democrats 36.0%, Republicans 33.1%, no party or other party 30.8%.

The highest “other” ever in this Rasmussen Poll was in July 2007, when “Other” hit 32.9%. The link above has another link that shows the results back to 2004.

On November 30, a status conference was held in Idaho Republican Party v Ysursa, the federal case over whether the Constitution protects the Republican Party’s desire to have a primary in which only party members may vote. Currently, Idaho does not have registration by party. On primary day, any voter is free to vote in any party’s primary.

By January 15, the Republican Party will present a summary of the evidence it will be presenting at the upcoming trial. This will include a copy of the expert report by one of the party’s witnesses, Michael Munger, who is a professor of political science and an expert in political parties. Then, there will be another status conference on January 26 to set the details for the upcoming trial.