Top-Two Blues: California’s elusive quest for ‘moderate candidates’ and other reform follies
On June 5, California held a new kind of primary election, which proponents hoped would lead to a new kind of politics. Alas, the new politics seems to resemble the old. For decades, the state ran a closed-primary system, with registered members of each party picking their nominees for the general election. (Independent, or “no party preference,” voters could not take part in these primaries.) A 1996 ballot measure changed the system to a “blanket” format, with all candidates on the same ballot. Voters could cast their ballots for any candidate; the top vote-getter from each party would advance to the general election.
In 2000, the Supreme Court struck down the blanket primary on the grounds that voters hostile to a party’s positions could hijack its nominations. In response, the state legislature established a modified version of the closed primary: each party would have the option of letting independents vote on its nominations. Critics argued that under the new system, each party’s base voters would effectively become the electoral gatekeepers. Sure enough, conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats spurned moderate candidates, leaving the state with a polarized political class. And this polarization, the critics concluded, fostered policy gridlock.
Then came Proposition 14, a ballot measure to change the primary process for congressional, statewide, and legislative races. As with the blanket primary, all candidates would be on the same ballot. But instead of resulting in one nominee per party, this system would send the top-two vote getters to the general election, regardless of party. In a heavily Democratic district, for instance, the primary could put two Democrats on the November ballot. The proposal passed with 54 percent of the vote on June 8, 2010 (but its terms dictated that the top-two primary wouldn’t go into effect until 2012).