As the popularity of the major parties has declined, independent and minor party candidates have been doing well. During the last fifteen years, independent or minor
Governor Brown signed SB 568, which moves all of California’s partisan primaries from June to the first week in March, in midterm years as well
On April 15, the Assembly Elections Committee passed AB 372, a bill which seems motivated by a desire to completely rid the November ballot of
California had the greatest drop in voter turnout of any state in the November 2014 election, compared to the November 2010 election. According to the
On March 9, filing for the California primary closed (except in a few districts in which the incumbent is not running for re-election). It appears
In June 2010, California voters will see a ballot measure for the “top-two open primary”. It says that for Congress and state office, 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 Senator Abel Maldonado, the author of the bill (SCA 4 and SB 6) and Governor Arnold Scharzenegger are the biggest backers of the measure. The legislature put it on the ballot in February, after Maldonado said he would only vote for the budget 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.