San Jose Mercury News
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Proposition 14: "Open"/ "Top Two" Primaries
6:06PM May 23, 2010
Voters are fed up with the ineffectiveness of their elected representatives. And yet few realize that our political system perpetuates the dysfunction — rewarding those who stake out extreme ideological positions rather than encouraging pragmatic solutions to complex problems.
Proposition 14 on the June 8 ballot would create a “top-two” primary system to help reverse those incentives. If it passes, all candidates for statewide office and Congress, regardless of party, will appear on the same primary ballot. Voters of all persuasions will choose among them, like they do in most local elections. The top two finishers will appear on the November ballot, even if they turn out to be from the same party.
The result, we believe, will be a broader electorate choosing more results-oriented representatives — people who respond to the needs of all constituents, not just the small slice who dominate primary elections.
California had open primaries in 1998 and 2000 after the adoption of Proposition 198. According to a study by the reform group California Forward, those elections had higher turnouts, and voters felt they were more fair and offered more choice.
“Budgets were more often passed on time and there were more bipartisan coalitions,” the study said.
A few moderate legislators from both parties were sent to Sacramento in those years. One of them, Republican Abel Maldonado, says he wouldn’t have survived a
typical Republican primary. Now a senator, he forced the Democratic leadership in Sacramento to put the open primary back on the ballot in exchange for his vote on the budget last year.
The U.S. Supreme Court had struck down Proposition 198 in 2000, saying the two political parties have a right to choose their own nominees. Proposition 14 is modeled after a system used in Washington, which the Court upheld because it does not specifically select party nominees.
This spring, the Republican primary for governor shows much of what’s wrong with the current system. Candidates Steve Poizner and Meg Whitman once were regarded as moderates, but they have raced to the right to get the nomination. Voters in November will just have to guess what the GOP nominee really believes.
Proposition 14 would end that ridiculous game. Successful candidates would have to appeal to the broadest number of voters, not the most extreme.
The top-two primary system is opposed by both major parties, since it would diminish their power. They also say it would exclude third parties from the general election — but the only member of the Green Party ever sent to the Assembly, Audie Bock of Oakland, was elected after an open primary.
One of Proposition 14’s strongest supporters is the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, whose CEO members — Democrats and Republicans — ranked its passage among their top priorities. They worry that California’s dysfunction will further erode the state’s competitiveness.
No one, not even Maldonado, believes Proposition 14 will quickly change Sacramento. But combined with the citizens’ redistricting process now under way, it should help promote problem-solving over rigid partisanship. Vote yes. (less)
