Correct so far, but I don’t think anyone official has “called” the two winners yet. The latest results I can find (AP from more than 3 hours ago) show 58% of ballots counted, and Steyer was almost 6 full points behind Becerra, but I guess that could still change.
every time I check the percentage of votes counted drops. It is currently sitting at 55% on Calmatters.
I’m going to come right out and say: for a smart, successful state, California runs its elections stupidly. It routinely takes weeks or months to determine results. And this primary system is just dumb. (Yes, with a B!)
My niece and her husband, both semi-bohemian artists, both voted for Steyer without any great enthusiasm.
I think inefficiently is the more accurate descriptor than stupidly. It’s a good enough system in terms of serving democracy with mail-in votes accepted right up to the election day post-date. But counting is traditionally done by the counties (hmmm…) and there are 58 counties all of whom have different budgets and systems in place. So you get this very scattershot, somewhat chaotic tabulation system that is still accepting votes coming in the mail days after the election. It’s glacially slow taken as a whole.
The only way to try and improve it would be to:
a.) Force even stricter standardization. But that still runs into the issue of disparate resource allocations in counties.
b.) State takeover and centralization. But that would almost certainly be more expensive and logistically difficult and will create outcry in certain sectors.
c.) Limiting the franchise. All votes must be in by election day, but then you will get people being shafted by randomness in the Post Office (which the Feds have been putting downward pressure on). It will be potentially a little less democratic as a result. Not a lot maybe, but a little.
California is just really, really big and populous. It’s not easy to navigate.
Not at all. We will know the two winners for the General elections by this time tomorrow. In fact the results are all but certain now.
Unless you are talking about until the very last vote is counted- which always takes time, across the USA.
Well, yeah.
That is what the Republicans want, to disenfranchise mail in voters. Or so they can have their own Postmaster just slow the mail by a couple of days so millions of votes dont get counted.
It is rarely important to count ALL the votes.
All the gnashing of teeth resulted in voters being aware of the danger of simply voting for their preferred candidate, and instead coalescing around two Democrats. Without it, maybe Porter, Mahan and other Dems keep a higher percentage, and Hilton and Bianco end up 1-2. It certainly wasn’t pointless.
And that’s a fair point. In fact it may well be that it’s a feature here: forcing the voters themselves to consider strategic voting from the start, as opposed to taking the primary for granted as a messaging freebie.
I do not believe the issue was raised publicly to that level; in fact, the only place I read or heard about it was here. Full disclosure: I don’t watch political events on TV, but I do read about them.
Many people may have thought of it themselves, on seeing interim polling results, and then changed their voting to be more strategic, but in my opinion the single event that vaulted Becerra into the top D spot was Swalwell dropping out, and the single event that vaulted Steyer into the next D spot was the $200+ million he spent on advertising.
They must be re-estimating the total number of ballots, as mail-in ballots continue to come in. Now NBC says 54.4% have been counted (as of 5 minutes ago).
It’s still close enough that it might change, but of the major partisan offices currently at play Insurance Commissioner looks like the only one where it has two same party leaders. In this case, two Democrats - Jane Kim 23.7% and Ben Allen 19.2%. With Republican Stacy Korsgarden trailing in third at 17.5%. Four Republicans split another 24.4% between them, with two Democrats splitting another 11.6%.
Added up those percentages clearly overall favor the Democrats, as they always do these days in CA. Like I said earlier this system does have a tendency to favor the dominant party. It’s just the more candidates spend the money to throw their hat in the ring, the higher the odds of a chaotic result.
It did make the papers when Hilton and Bianco were the early leaders and I saw a little bit of yammering on NextDoor about it in the weeks running up to the election (no, I do not recommend that app - it is more annoying than useful, but I keep it for the occasional new restaurant comment). So it wasn’t just here. But of course it is impossible to judge how many people are plugged in enough to politics for that to have been a major factor.
It certainly affected my vote though.
California values voter access more than quick results. It’s not really that important to get results very quickly. Candidates have the whole summer to campaign. It is important to expand the franchise to more people.
Why does California run its primary elections in such a monumentally stupid way?
I thought the whole point of a Primary was to be a kind of “internal vote” for each party, so that each party can decide which candidate to put all their muscle behind in the general election.
If I recall correctly, or anyway this is why I think it is not a bad idea (though it could be refined and improved): it gives all voters, including the large number of independents, the ability to choose the final two candidates, not just those who are registered to the two main parties. Personally, I am also in favor of reducing the power of the major party machinery, which this arrangement does.
What you’re describing is an “open primary”. And yes, everything you’ve said about it is true.
But in a normal open primary, the one with the most votes from each party goes on to appear on the general election ballot in November.
California goes one step further. It puts whichever two candidates got the most votes, regardless of party affiliation, on the general election ballot. This has the effect of splitting the vote between multiple candidates from the same party. Instead of people doing their strategic voting in November and picking their party, it moves the strategic voting all the way back into the primary. “Gee,” the voter says to himself, “If I don’t vote for the candidate in my party who stands the best chance of winning, my party might not be represented on the November ballot at all!”
Now you ruin the chances of dark-horse candidates getting any traction at all, all the way back in the Primary Election, before they’ve even had a chance to demonstrate their worthiness.
In addition to the discussion above, the very specific reason it is done this way is California is one of those states that allows for citizen-initiated state-wide direct referendums. Including amendments to the California Constitution. Love them or hate them (there are reasonable arguments for and against), that’s how a lot of political issues are decided in California. This system birthed the California primary process.
In 1996 Proposition 198 passed, creating a blanket primary. It was later struck down by the Supreme Court as a violation of the 1rst Amendment (for abridging freedom of association). After an initial failed attempt to redress that in 2004 with a jungle primary, a second state-wide vote succeeded in 2010 with Proposition 14 which amended the California Constitution.
So it the result of a citizen vote. Quasi-Athenian democracy in action. Messily in action perhaps, which why some don’t like the proposition system 
. California voters (or a small majority of them in 2010) did this to themselves.
Naw. it was gonna happen anyway, once whats-his-name was gone.
It is not stupid and it has worked every time.
But here is why-
Before the reforms, each political party chose a nominee to advance to the general election, with only the party’s registered voters participating in the primary election.
In 2010, California voters approved the Schwarzenegger-backed ballot measure to change that traditional partisan primary.
The new system folded the previously separate primaries for Democrats, Republicans and third parties into a single race. That means all candidates for a particular office run on the same ballot. The two candidates who secure the most votes face off in the general, regardless of their party affiliation. In California, that often means a general election can pit two Democrats against each other.
The logic behind the top two, according to proponents, is that candidates will feel compelled to consider the needs of voters outside their political faction, as the primary is open to all registered voters. Nebraska and Washington use similar processes.
Abel Maldonado, a self-proclaimed “pragmatic Republican” who spearheaded the California effort, told the Atlantic in 2015 that with the then-new open primary, aspiring elected officials “have to work for the taxpayers”.
Right. The voters choose.
Only if many candidates declare for the same party.
And if they all stay in until the actual voting.
One can argue that it produces better elected officials: In a conventional primary system, the voters from each party vote for the candidates who are most appealing to that party, which is often the more extreme end. Then, in the general, you get an extremist on one side vs. an extremist on the other side. With everyone voting on all of the candidates at once, though, there’s more chance for moderates.
It maybe doesn’t make sense right now, when the most moderate Republicans are still more extreme than the most extreme Democrats. But one hopes that our current situation is an aberration that will eventually correct itself.
It’s important to get results in what might be considered, nationwide, an “average” time (as opposed to an unusually long time, which is what California provides).
That’s because the unprincipled opposition—i.e. Republicans—will not only claim that the unusually-long time is evidence of FRAUD AND RIGGING, but they will believed by many.
Having a closer-to-average time for getting results might harm a percentage or so of voters who submit their votes as late as possible, but that might be a reasonable trade-off for short-circuiting this particular Republican lie.