Why not go back to smoke filled rooms ?
You say this facetiously, but, there is something to be said for the old smoke-filled room. Specifically, the candidates put forward would (usually) be both competent and competitive. While the primary (and to a lesser extent, the caucus) is more democratic, it also tends to select attractive ideologues, who may or may not do well in the general election, and who may be an utter disaster once in office (pick the example of your choice).
I’d like to see a combination - use the smoke-filled room (with less smoke and more transparency) to winnow the field, and then use the primary to make the final selection.
Er, if he didn’t win the 2006 “regular” election for governor, then who did?
I was under the impression that California still has open primaries for all partisan offices except President - and one reason for that is, when they started the open Presidential primaries, somebody pointed out that the Rules of the Republican Party said that a primary cannot be used to determine a state’s delegates to the national convention if anyone who was not a registered Republican at the time could vote in it. The solution at the time was to allow two counts - one including all voters, and one counting just registered Republicans; the latter was used for delegate selection.
You say that like it’s a bad thing.
You say this like it’s a bad thing. If the alternative is to have no political voice at all, I don’t see any problem with crossover voting.
If you actually intend on voting for the candidate in the general election (when you normally don’t vote for his party) that’s one thing.
But if you’re doing it simply to try to skew who is on your opposing parties ballot, that is unethical.
My example of David Clarke was in response to Amateur Barbarian asking for evidence of cross voting affecting an election. Whether you think it’s a good or bad thing, it does happen and I have shown that.