California's New Primary System
Posted: Sat Jun 12, 2010 12:37 am
Last Tuesday, voters in The Altered State passed a new political primary system.
Under this system, the primaries will become unitary. All candidates for a given state or federal office, (except the Presidency) Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, Socialist Workers, will all run in a single primary. Then the top two vote geters, regardless of party affiliation, will face off in the general election.
Whether this will actually come into affect is debatable. There will undoubtedly be a round of court challenges. Neither of the major parties, (or the small ones either) like the system. It passed most likely because voters in this state are so frustrated with the current dysfunctional political situation, (a national problem, but particularly acute in California, where the Legislature has raised district gerrymandering to a fine art.) that they are willing to embrace any reform in the hope that it will make things better . Arnold was a major proponent of this reform; supposedly it will help to encourage the nomination and election of more middle of the road legislators and congressional reps who might be more inclined to make compromises in order to actually get things done.
But while I share Arnold's concern and frustration over the current state of affairs, I fear that like term limits, (which I predicted at the time they were passed would not have the desired affects, and would instead make things worse in a variety of ways...which has turned out to be exactly what has happened) that this new system will fall prey to the law of unintended consequences and could make things worse rather than better, (possibly much worse.)
I simply do not follow the logic of why this system is supposed to produce more centrist candidates. I can easily see plausible scenarios where the exact opposite will happen.
Say You have a multi-party primary with six or seven candidates. Your two top vote geters could easily be people who who didn't get more than 22 or 23 per cent of the vote. (Or possibly even less.) This could easily be two extreme lefties, or two extreme righties, or one of each. Then what happens is the voters are forced to make a choice between two extremists, neither of whom received any truly substantial support in the first round of voting. In all likelihood had their been regular primaries and a run off, neither of these hypothetical candidates would even be on the final ballot. How can this possibly be good for democracy?
It seems to me a better idea would be the system we had back in Virginia; open primaries.
Under the Virginia system, each party held it's own primary, but anyone (Democrat, Republican, independent, etc.) can request a ballot to vote in what ever primary they choose to on this particular day. This approach encourages independents to participate in the nominating process, and it seems to me that this would have a much better chance of helping candidates who are committed to working with the opposition (rather than candidates who are openly and proudly hostile to the idea...which is frequently the case now...)
Under this system, the primaries will become unitary. All candidates for a given state or federal office, (except the Presidency) Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, Socialist Workers, will all run in a single primary. Then the top two vote geters, regardless of party affiliation, will face off in the general election.
Whether this will actually come into affect is debatable. There will undoubtedly be a round of court challenges. Neither of the major parties, (or the small ones either) like the system. It passed most likely because voters in this state are so frustrated with the current dysfunctional political situation, (a national problem, but particularly acute in California, where the Legislature has raised district gerrymandering to a fine art.) that they are willing to embrace any reform in the hope that it will make things better . Arnold was a major proponent of this reform; supposedly it will help to encourage the nomination and election of more middle of the road legislators and congressional reps who might be more inclined to make compromises in order to actually get things done.
But while I share Arnold's concern and frustration over the current state of affairs, I fear that like term limits, (which I predicted at the time they were passed would not have the desired affects, and would instead make things worse in a variety of ways...which has turned out to be exactly what has happened) that this new system will fall prey to the law of unintended consequences and could make things worse rather than better, (possibly much worse.)
I simply do not follow the logic of why this system is supposed to produce more centrist candidates. I can easily see plausible scenarios where the exact opposite will happen.
Say You have a multi-party primary with six or seven candidates. Your two top vote geters could easily be people who who didn't get more than 22 or 23 per cent of the vote. (Or possibly even less.) This could easily be two extreme lefties, or two extreme righties, or one of each. Then what happens is the voters are forced to make a choice between two extremists, neither of whom received any truly substantial support in the first round of voting. In all likelihood had their been regular primaries and a run off, neither of these hypothetical candidates would even be on the final ballot. How can this possibly be good for democracy?
It seems to me a better idea would be the system we had back in Virginia; open primaries.
Under the Virginia system, each party held it's own primary, but anyone (Democrat, Republican, independent, etc.) can request a ballot to vote in what ever primary they choose to on this particular day. This approach encourages independents to participate in the nominating process, and it seems to me that this would have a much better chance of helping candidates who are committed to working with the opposition (rather than candidates who are openly and proudly hostile to the idea...which is frequently the case now...)