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 party candidates have been elected to state legislatures in 25 states.  Also during the last fifteen years, such candidates have either been elected, or come in second, for Governor or U.S. […]

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 minor party candidates.  Even though the bill has a Republican sponsor, it received no votes from either Republican member of the committee.  But it passed because 4 of the 5 […]

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 voter turnout statistics gathered by Political Science Professor Michael P. McDonald, available at www.electproject.org, California’s turnout went from 45.8% in November 2010, to 30.8% in November 2014.  Professor McDonald calculates […]

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 that there are only fifteen minor party candidates running for U.S. House of Representatives and state legislature. This is the lowest number of California minor party candidates for those offices […]

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.