Last week I got my sample ballot for the upcoming California primary and opened the booklet to the page for the United States Senate candidates.
I was almost blinded by the array of twenty-four candidates listed randomly in one huge roster. It was not even alphabetical, but rather a helter skelter assortment of names, next to each of which was their party preference. Of the twenty-four, there were fourteen Republicans, six Democrats, two Peace and Freedom and one each for American Independent and Libertarian.
Remembering that this was the year long-time incumbent Dianne Feinstein was running for re-election, I was hard pressed to find her in the ensuing clutter. Nor was it easier to find her opponents, none of whom I had ever heard of.
Amidst the chaos it was also difficult to locate the Republicans who had any sort of a chance. Actually even after Googling many of the names it didn't seem that any of them did, unless, as could well be the case, one might not easily find Dianne Feinstein's name in the muddle.
The problems I have are at least twofold.
First, why has this process been effected in the first place? Wasn't the purpose of political primaries to take the process out of the hands of big city bosses and to allow the citizenry of each state to choose their nominees? And in particular to put the choice in the hands of people who espouse a political point of view, hence their having registered in a specific political party in the first place?
There have been various foolhardy attempts to change this system, some of which have been employed by several states, most notably Louisiana and Washington state. California itself has tried a number of schemes, one of which, the blanket primary system, was enacted with Proposition 198 in 1996. This method allowed voters of either party to vote for candidates for governor of one party and then to switch gears and nominate someone from the other party for a different office, let's say, U.S. Senator. In short order, the process was declared unconstitutional in 2000 by the United States Supreme Court in California Democratic Party v. Jones.
Because of this, Washington state, whose own blanket primary system was thus disallowed, enacted what was termed a non-partisan blanket primary, the essence of which was passed by California voters via Proposition 14 in 2010.
In this instance, all the candidates for every partisan office except for president and party central committees are listed together on the ballots issued to everyone, regardless of party affiliation, though with each candidate's party mentioned right beside their name. Then, the top two candidates, no matter what their party is, advance to the general election. In this manner, fewer candidates of one party might well reap the most votes causing two people of a similar political persuasion to ultimately vie for the office, giving voters scant choice in the general election.
Imagine a situation where two liberals contest for a seat or two right-wing conservatives do the same? Not to mention the fact that, unlike non-partisan political contests in many states, such as for mayor and the city council, if the top candidate in a primary gets more than fifty percent of the vote there would still be a presumably unnecessary run-off in the general election. Conversely, if a candidate for mayor of Los Angeles gets over half the votes in the primary he/she is elected right then and there.
This is a preposterous system, made more so by the confusion of a ballot with multiple names and their parties strewn about in a haphazard way. Many of you probably remember the famous "butterfly" ballot in Palm Beach County, Florida, during the 2000 General Election. Thousands of baffled voters, many of them elderly, voted for Pat Buchanan rather than Al Gore, thus tipping the close election, absent the recount desired by the Florida Supreme Court and denied by a 5-4 Supreme Court vote, to George W. Bush. Even Buchanan admitted that the communities of retired Jewish voters were unlikely to have voted for him in such large numbers.
So, here we are in California with a primary system that has done away with citizens of one political persuasion choosing their major candidates in important elections. In so doing it creates a ballot that, in certain circumstances, might well prevent a favored candidate from getting all the votes he/she might have garnered simply because of the difficulty plowing through all the names and the mélange of political parties in one list.
It's preposterous and should be repealed. Candidates should be nominated by people who are affiliated with the same party. If their candidate doesn't get nominated they can always switch sides in the general election. However, this effective destruction of a democratic reform instituted many years ago to put nominations into the hands of people who have signed on for the cause is a sham and, worse, is bound to turn people off from the process.
Michael Russnow's website is ramproductionsinternational.com
Follow Michael Russnow on Twitter: www.twitter.com/kerrloy
7 It is positive thing, not a negative, to have more people voting in the first round, and more choices for them to choose from. Michael Russnow is insulting your intelligence by telling you it's too difficult to "plow through all the names". It's not too difficult for Chicago, the biggest party town in the country, or Houston, or Phoenix, or Atlanta, or over 95% of the cities in America. The parties have no trouble marketing their candidates in this system. What they want though, is to be able to tell YOU who you can vote for.
8 It is disingenuous for Mr. Russnow to say he is against three men in a room when that is what this is all about. He has no problem shutting 40% or more of the voters out of the first round, so long as his party benefits. He has no problem saying you can't vote for a candidate you like in one race from one party and another race from another party, so long as his party benefits. He will attempt to scare you because he himself is scared, scared of the fact that people are leaving the parties in droves, scared of the fact that he has to manipulate the rules to stay in control, scared of the fact that people are learning how to do politics without parties telling them what to do or how to vote. Well, all I can say Michael is, cry me a river.
1 Political parties are mentioned nowhere in the US constitution.
2 It is the STATE, not the parties, that determines the time and manner of their elections.
3 Over 40% of the country identifies as independent according to the latest Gallup poll, with the #'s increasing every year.
4 In half the states in the country, including California before top two passed, those independents are locked out of the all important first round of voting, forced to choose the lesser of two evils in November, despite the fact that their taxpayer dollars are paying for those elections
5 Part of the reason partisanship has become so extreme in the statehouses and in Congress is that in these closed primaries, you have 5-10% of the total voters picking who the candidates are for everyone to vote on in November, usually the most extreme, dogmatic, calcified, ideological elements.
6 The Florida election in 2000 has nothing at all to do with this. To my knowledge, there are no butterfly ballots of hanging chads in California. It is blatant fear-mongering by Mr. Russnow, and the fact that he would do so makes his opinion less trustworthy.
The top-two system, as adopted in Washington and California, allows anyone to hijack any party's name on the primary ballot, whether that person is a Nazi, child molester, or whatever. No party can control who steals its name on the primary ballot. Any political party can have its identity stolen by complete strangers who suddenly take the party's name on the primary ballot.
Further, primary elections will be a game of "ringers," with political consultants recruiting candidates just to split the votes of the other parties. Republican consultants will recruit people to register and file as "Democratic" candidates, splitting the Democratic vote. Democrats will recruit phony "Republicans." Both of them will recruit phony "Independents" and phony "Libertarians," further increasing the party identity theft.
Expect a confusing ballot, with a dozen or more candidates for each major office who show "Party Preference"s. In primary elections since 1979 in Louisiana, there have been nine, nine, eight, 12, 16, 11, 17, and 12 candidates on the ballot for governor alone.
The voters of Oregon rejected such a system by a 2-1 vote in 2008. For much information about it, see http://saveoregonsdemocracy.org/ and in particular http://saveoregonsdemocracy.org/danmeek.html.