Open primary won’t live up to hype - Board Member of Election Law Journal and Editor of ballot-access.org Richard Winger
In June, California voters will see a ballot measure for the “top-two open primary.” It says that for Congress and state offices, all voters would see the same primary ballot, and all candidates would appear on the ballot. Then, in November, only the candidates who had placed first and second would be on the ballot.
State Sen. Abel Maldonado, the author of the bill, and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger are the biggest backers of the measure. The Legislature put it on the ballot in February, after Maldonado said he would vote for the budget only if his election law measure were passed. The measure has already been endorsed by the California Chamber of Commerce and several newspapers. They all say, and seem to believe, that if the measure is passed, there will be fewer hard-core conservatives and hard-core liberals in state elected office, and more moderates.
Oddly enough, the backers never seem to have looked at the experience of the two states that have actually used that system, to see if it’s true that the system would have that effect. Those two states are Louisiana and Washington. Nor have the backers looked at the California experience with the somewhat similar blanket primary.
Louisiana has the most experience with a system in which all candidates run on a single primary ballot, and in which there are no party nominees. It has used the system for state offices since 1975, and for Congress from 1978 through 2006. The only difference between the Louisiana system and the California proposal is that in Louisiana, if someone gets 50 percent in the first round, there is no second round.
In Louisiana, the candidates who place first and second are frequently not moderates. Both in 1990 (for U.S. Senate) and in 1991 (for governor) David Duke, a Ku Klux Klan leader, placed second. Also, in the 1995 gubernatorial race, the two top vote-getters were Republican Mike Foster and Democrat Cleo Fields. Foster’s No. 1 campaign plank was doing what he could to stop legalized abortion. Fields, a 32-year old black state legislator who had endorsed Jesse Jackson for president in 1988, was a capable and honest politician, but not someone who would normally be labeled a “moderate.” And, in 1999, the top two vote-getters for governor were Foster again, and Congressman William Jefferson, who was sentenced to federal prison in 2009 for corruption.
Washington state used the system for the first time in 2008. Washington had no U.S. Senate seat in election but did have a gubernatorial race. The top two vote-getters were the incumbent, Christine Gregoire, a liberal Democrat, and Dino Rossi, a conservative Republican. Neither could have been described as a moderate. Rossi wanted to let public school districts decide for themselves whether to teach creationism. He wanted to let drugstores refuse to sell the morning-after pill. He wanted to reduce the minimum wage. Gregoire supported civil unions, legal abortion, and public employee unions.
In other races in Washington in 2008, the “top-two open primary” mostly just seemed to make life easy for incumbents. Out of the 123 state legislative races, the eight statewide state office races, and the eight U.S. House races, only one incumbent (a state legislator) lost in the primary, and he had a scandal and would probably have lost under any system. Only five legislative seats switched between the two major parties. (By contrast, in 2006, when Washington had used a normal system in which each party had its own primary ballot and its own nominees, seven legislative seats had switched parties.) All the U.S. House members were re-elected.
Backers of the Maldonado proposal have other arguments in favor of the idea. They say it would improve voter turnout in primaries. However, when Washington state used the system in 2008 for the first time, turnout dropped, relative to 2004. According to the Washington Secretary of State, 2008 primary turnout was 42.58 percent, but 2004 was 45.14 percent. (Washington elects all its statewide offices in presidential years, so the midterm years are pretty sleepy affairs.)
Finally, supporters of the Maldonado idea say their system is fairer to independent voters. But already in California, independent voters are free to vote in any Democratic or Republican primary for Congress and state office. Supporters of the system still mourn the 1992 Republican U.S. Senate primary, when Tom Campbell was narrowly defeated by hard-core conservative Bruce Herschensohn. But back in 1992, independent voters couldn’t vote in Republican primaries; now they can. Registered Republicans are 31 percent of the California electorate and independents are 20 percent, so if Campbell runs for either governor or U.S. senator in 2010, he is free to campaign among independents and ask them to choose a Republican primary ballot. Backers of the “top-two open primary” already have the kind of system they seek, if they would just use it in a creative and imaginative way.
This article appeared in the Redding Record Searchlight. Richard Winger is the editor of Ballot Access News.
