But the party leadership can’t stop anybody from running, can they? They can try. But the days of the machine are over.
Former CEOs, high profile politicians and anybody with sufficient funding can run. As can those with nothing to lose. What I’d expect to happen would be for there to be extensive calls for the other guy to step down.
If the result of Prop 14 is that the parties have some sort of pre-primary, and only one candidate from each party gets into the main primary, then nothing at all has really changed from the way it works now.
Thinking back, the closest thing we had to an open primary election of late was the Gray Davis recall. That got us Arnold. I’m not at all sure that helped much … I’m reconsidering my vote on that one.
The open primary will likely have little impact at the statewide level. Consider that for a general election given two Rs and 1 D, for the 2 Rs to be the top two vote getters, they would collectively need greater than 34% each (rounding). It’s likely that the D would not win in any case and the impact of the open primary on the D is moot. In this case, at least there are options where the two on the general would need to have some cross appeal to win.
Where this will have a greater impact is at the district level where the local districts are fixed to a party. In those instances the idea is that while a solidly D or R district is unlikely to switch parties, at least there will be competing views within the party which will hopefully play to the middle, more.
Don’t forget to vote!
I was voter #4 at my polling place.
#9 at mine.
#66 at mine. But I didn’t vote until lunch.
My precinct (not far from downtown San Jose) had less than 250 registered voters for this election, so everyone got to vote absentee this time around. Pretty sad, huh?
I voted NO on all of the Propositions. What we really need is a “Kick **everyone **out and start all over again” Proposition. I bet that would pass with ease.
That would only serve to replace one group of folks with another possibly worse group of folks.
What we need is a “none of the above” listed along with the candidates. If that one won, then they would have to have another election with new candidates. (Yes, I know - costly and inefficient. I can dream, can’t I?)
They would have to keep repeating the election until they fielded a candidate who could beat “none of the above”. This would serve to improve the quality of the candidates, IMHO.
That actually happens in a Libertarian wankfest alternate history called Probability Broach.
Here are the results, as reported by the Cal SoS:
YES on Prop 13, 84.5% vs 15.5%
YES on Prop 14, 54.2% vs 45.8%
NO on Prop 15, 42.6% vs 57.4%
NO on Prop 16, 47.5% vs 52.5%
NO on Prop 17, 47.9% vs 52.1%
I have to say I’m happy with the results.
I have question on Prop 14. Consider this scenario of the results in a hypothetical primary election:
Candidate A ® got 35% of the vote.
Candidate B (I) got 25% of the vote.
Candidate C (D) got 20% of the vote.
Candidate D (D) got 20% of the vote.
So the two Democratic candidates split the Democratic voters, and had a greater combined total of voters than the Republican candidate, but with Prop 14, the Republican and the Independant are the only choices in the general election. Is my understanding correct?
That is how it would work out. And why the major parties won’t field more than one candidate. And also why individual politicians may be more willing to run without a party affiliation.
Thanks for the reply. It looks to me that this prop might give the political party machines more power.
Does this fix whatever voters thought was broke with the primary system?
(I didn’t mind having a zillion candidates after Gov. Davis was recalled.)
The parties themselves think it will weaken them. Both the California Republican and Democratic Parties were against the proposition.
I don’t think it will either weaken or strengthen the parties, but change how they operate. Getting an official party nomination will be different. Probably they will select one candidate for the primary. They will have to carefully balance satisfying the more extreme wing of the party versus the risk of being outcompeted from the center.
Or possibly the party will not support anyone in the primary and instead nominate whichever of the two winners better suits them. In any case, candidates will have to consider the center of the political spectrum as well as the partisan zealots.
I think this combined with the recently passed redistricting reform will definitely help our political system. The new redistricting will be done by a multi-partisan citizens committee who will be less eager to carve safe districts for incumbents.
Very nice to hear 16 and 17 failed. Though I doubt it will keep corporations from attempting to legislate their destiny through the referendum process in the future.
Thanks for your thoughts.
I had not been paying attention to the politics this year. 2008 burned me out a little.
I have a question for the above:
Why would a committee be less eager to carve safe districts?
Who picks the members of the committee?
…but without me (an independent) having to foot the bill, which is why I was for the prop. People told me I should just go ahead and join a party, but I don’t think I should have to join a private club to participate fully in a state-run election.
Here is the Citizens Redistricting Commission’s website. The selection process is complicated, but the end result is 5 Republicans, 5 Democrats and 4 unaffiliated. The final districting plan must be approved by at least 3 of the Republicans, 3 of the Democrats and 3 of the unaffiliated.
The committee should be less willing to favor incumbents because none of them are incumbents. The old system was drawn up by the legislators themselves, so they had a large incentive to favor themselves.
The committee should also be less willing to favor “safe” districts for either party because 3 of the 4 unaffiliated members have to approve.
Thanks for the info!
http://www.ktla.com/news/landing/ktla-arnold-voting-problems,0,4261451.story
Sigh. If I saw this stuff in a sitcom, it would be eyerollingly annoying. Real life is stranger than fiction.