On May 17, California held a special election to fill the vacant U.S. House seat, 36th district. Here is commentary on how the Proposition 14 system worked from Bill Whalen, a Research Fellow at Hoover Institution. Whalen has previously worked as a media consultant for Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tom Campbell, Pete Wilson, and Richard Riordan, all known as moderate California Republicans.
Also, T.A. Barnes, an Oregon political activist and a Democrat, has this commentary on the recent election at www.blueoregon.
Here is commentary by Jessica Levinson, Director of Political Reform at the Center for Governmental Studies and an Adjunct Professor at Loyola Law School.
Here is a you tube from a California Green Party statewide meeting on May 1, talking about the lawsuits against the top-two system in California and Washington. The attorney for the California lawsuits, Gautam Dutta, is the second speaker. Richard Winger is included also.
Pingback: Digest for 5/21 | Stuck in a Digital-Haze
Bill Whalen makes the same mistake that Richard Winger did in attributing the low turnout to the primary format rather than the location (Los Angeles). It is noteworthy that Winger who had earlier commented on the low turnout in the two Los Angeles senate races, did not mention the turnout in SD-4 in northern California.
The number of candidates was not that unusual for a congressional special election, though there were more candidates not affiliated with the ballot-qualified parties. In fact, there have been more such candidates in the 4 special elections under the Open Primary than the 41 prior special elections under the old system (going back to 1995). I don’t think that is bad.
Hahn’s strategy would have been just as effective under the old system, as her goal would have been to finish first on the Democratic side and then easily win in the special general. If you are going to win the Democratic primary, especially one where independent-identifying voters are free to participate, it is an effective strategy to portray one opponent as an extreme leftist, and the other as a former Republican. And the Politico article that Whalen linked to, attributed Bowen’s loss more to the ineptness of the Bowen campaign than anything Hahn did.
Whalen also appears to confuse cause and effect. It was Jane Harmon’s resignation that caused the special election. If Janice Hahn is elected and gets along better with Nancy Pelosi than Harmon did, it won’t be because of the election system, but because Harmon is no longer the representative.
T.A.Barnhart starts out his commentary by noting that he voted against school board candidate merely because he had been endorsed by Phil Kiesling. You may recall the smear campaign by the Oregon teacher’s union against Kiesling during the election on the Open Primary in Oregon. Barnhart would likely have approved.
Barnhart makes the same election turnout claim that Whalen does. Barnhart compounds the problem by citing early election returns, and then didn’t bother to add the numbers up. If you total the numbers for the individual candidates, they total 52,968, rather than 42,968. Addition can be tricky. And there were another 10,000 votes cast in the final election returns. 18.42% turnout is not great, but is typical for Los Angeles (eg CD-37 race in June 2007)
Barnhart’s claim that California requires most voters to vote in person is, of course, FALSE. By-mail turnout has not yet been released for CD-36, but for SD-28 it was 60%, which is the lowest for a special election this year. In the SD-4 special election it approached 90%.
The Open Primary did not change the day of the election, nor the use of mail voting in California, but that does not mean that Barnhart can’t blame those on the Open Primary.
Barnhart is probably not stupid nor dishonest, but simply is so blinded by his own prejudices, that he is incapable of critically examining the data. He makes a simple arithmetic error and is deluded into believing it to be correct because it supports his conclusion.
Barnhart then goes on to make some really crazy claims about party candidates. First, the Libertarian and Peace&Freedom candidates are, according to Gautam Dutta, major-party candidates. Barnhart probably does not realize that in the 41 special elections in California prior to the Open Primary, there were only 4 candidates not-affiliated with qualified parties, compared to 5 such candidates in the 4 special elections conducted under the Open Primary reform.
Barnhart seems to think that only registered Libertarians and Peace&Freedom candidates can vote for Libertarian and Peace&Freedom candidates. While that is true under the old partisan primary scheme (general elections only) that Barnhart favors, it is of course not true under the Open Primary. In fact, partisan primaries provide a disincentive to affiliate with smaller parties since they rarely have contested primaries.
The real reason that left-wing Democrats like Barnhart and the public employee unions favor the partisan primary system is that activists can control the Democratic primary, and then the general public has to go along in the general election.
#2, Janice Hahn’s strategy to beat Debra Bowen would not have been just as effective under the old system. The reason so many Democrats voted for Marcy Winograd is because they, and all the media and all the political observers, thought the top two finishers would be Hahn and Bowen. Winograd supporters who preferred Bowen assumed they could safely vote for Winograd in May and then vote for Bowen in July.
Under the old system, Winograd would have lost many votes to Bowen in the first round, because voters would have understood if they wanted Bowen, they had to vote for her in the first round.
Richard Winger
What put Craig Huey over the top to beat out Debra Bowen
was the American Independent Party did a cross party endorsement to Mr. Huey. AIP placed that endorsement
in the sample ballot. The GOP gave no help to any
of the Republican running. They thought it was going to
be a Bowen and Hahn run off.
Sincerely, Mark Seidenberg, Vice Chairman, American Independent Party
Most people really need to be specified some additional privacy.
Tom Ammiano ran for mayor as a write-in candidate in the general election in 1999. He finished second and qualified for the runoff ballot. In that same runoff, Richard Winger wanted to cast a write-in ballot for Michael Edelstein and was prevented from doing so. The California Supreme Court later said it was OK to do so.
Similarly, in Long Beach, the city councilor who qualified as a write-in candidate in the first round, and appeared on the ballot for the runoff.
Washington does not let candidates who run in the primary and lose, whether as an on-ballot or write-in candidate, run as a write-in candidate in the general election. Further, Washington does not let a write-in candidate who receives less than 1% of the vote qualify for the general election, even if they finish second. They don’t even bother tabulating the write-in votes. Compare to California where write-in candidates for voter-nominated offices only need 1 vote, so long as they finish 2nd to qualify for the general election, and California always tabulates the votes (for example, a write-in candidate in the CD-32 race received 2 votes).
I thought it was funny when Dutta started to say what Elections Code 8606 “says” and then stopped and said he was going to paraphrase it. It simply does not say what Dutta claims it does. It’s beyond me, why Dutta doesn’t think that something that is grammatically incomplete is not severable.
#4 Why would Winograd supporters prefer Bowen to Hahn?
Is the system that Nebraska uses to elect its legislature constitutional? Is the system that Wisconsin uses to elect its judges constitutional? Richard Winger appears to think so because a candidate must finish in the Top 2 in the primary to qualify for the general election, setting a higher level of support required to qualify than the 5% “modicum” of support threshold that the courts have set in cases where candidates qualify on the basis of their partisan affiliation.
What about North Carolina’s system of IRV?
Richard Winger seems to think that Clarence Thomas convinced all (most) of his colleagues to support the Open Primary.
What he doesn’t recognize is that district court decision was weak, and essentially reasoned that because the Grange favored the Open Primary, that the system was the same as the blanket primary, rather than recognizing that the intent was to remove the flaw that Justice Scalia had identified in California Democratic Party v Jones.
The 9th Circuit rather than endorsing this reasoning, clarified the issues and teed it up for the Supreme Court. And finally it was the effective argument by Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna that won the case, not the silence of Justice Thomas.
Judge Coughenour had clearly tired of the political parties attempts to rehash resolved issues (remember his early order where he said it wasn’t his job to save the parties from ineffective counsel).
#5 Did that endorsement cost the American Independent party anything, other than the cost of organizing an endorsement meeting, and sending or delivering the endorsement to Dean Logan? The Green Party could have endorsed former member Michael Chamness as easily, correct?
The Preamble to Proposition 14 (Section 2), stated that it was the intent of previously enacted legislation (ie SB 6) to implement an Open Primary system. This forms the legislative intent of the People in voting to amend their Constitution for the State of California.
Therefore, any ambiguity in SB 6 should be resoved in favor of implementing the Open Primary, rather than frustrating it, as Dutta argues.
The Preamble says that existing voter registrations should be converted to party preferences. Elections Code 2151(d), implemented by SB 6, provides the method for that conversion.
In particular, it divides registrations into just two classes: (1) Declined To State; and (2) Voters who had Affiliated with a Party. By use of the very specific term “Declined To State”, it is absolutely clear that the more limited definition of “party” in Section 338 does not apply.
Michael Chamness claims to be affiliated with the Coffee Party. If he means this in a formal sense, rather than that he just hangs out at Starbucks, then it means he executed a new voter registration affidavit in 2010 (before SB 6 came into effect), declaring that it was his intent to affiliate with the Coffee Party at the next primary election. We don’t know at this time whether there will be a Coffee Party primary in February (or June) 2012. If a Daddy Starbucks finances a registration drive, there may well be a Coffee Party primary (there are over a dozen parties actively attempting to qualify for 2012 in California). But it doesn’t matter whether or not there is a realistic chance of qualification for the Coffee Party or not. Michael Chamness signed his voter registration affidavit to certify that all the information was truthful and correct.
On January 1, 2011, then Dean Logan would have executed Section 2151(d) and converted Chamness’s intent to affiliate with the Coffee Party into a party preference for the Coffee Party. Chamness claims to continue to be affiliated with the Coffee Party. This could not be true, unless Logan followed the law.
These are simple fact questions. Perhaps there is some reason that Dutta is resisting discovery? He could resolve these issues by providing the actual voter registration affidavit that Chamness signed, and instead of simply claiming that Chamness is “affiliated” with the Coffee Party, document the actual actual actions that Chamness took to formally affiliate with the Coffee Party in the manner provided for under California statute.
If Michael Chamness’s affiliation with the Coffee Party was converted to a preference under 2151(d), then he does not have “Independent Status” as defined by Elections Code 325.
If Michael Chamness declared an intent to affiliate with the Coffee Party on his most recent affidavit of voter registration, then when he declared his candidacy under terms of Elections Code 8002.5, he was required to specify his party preference as a candidate as a preference for the Coffee Party, or to have nothing appear on the ballot.
What did Chamness specify on his declaration of candidacy?
If Dean Logan denied him the label “My Preference is the Coffee Party”, then he should be suing Logan for violating the law, rather than suing Logan for following a (claimed) unconstitutional law.
In the only formal state-recognized role for qualified political parties in the election of voter-nominated offices, the endorsement of candidates on the sample ballot (13302(b)), it is explicitly specified that this applies to “qualified” parties only. That is, with regard to voter-nominated offices in general, the limited definition of “party” in Section 338 does not apply, but rather the broader use of “party” and “party preference” as used in the voter registration portions of the Elections Code is intended.
Dutta tries to interpret “party preference” as meaning “preference for a Section 338 party”, while ignoring Section 300.5 that says that a voter (and candidate’s) “party preference” is what the voter specified on their affidavit of registration.
Why does Dutta ignore Elections Code 300.5? Why does he ignore 2151(d)? Why does he use such a contorted interpretation of 325? Why does he ignore Elections Code 4?
#2 Bill Whalen also used preliminary figures to determine the turnout.
In discussion on the Blue Oregon website, Richard Winger mentions the Jesse Ventura election.
When Ventura was elected governor, the Reform party had a large number of candidates for the legislature. These candidates did very poorly (single digits). Ventura was essentially running as an independent.
The Democratic primary that year was hotly contested by several sons of noteworthy Democrats, including two former presidential candidates. Roughly 4 times as many persons voted in the Democratic primary as in the Republican primary. In a state without party registration, the top race on the ballot, serves as a quasi-blanket primary, where voters choose their primary ballot based on the most significant or interesting race.
When California had the blanket primary, there was one legislative race that had two Libertarians, one Democrat, and one Republican. The Democrat and Republican were guaranteed nomination. So a number of voters far in excess of the number of Libertarians voted in the primary for that race.
In Minnesota, there was simply no reason to choose the Reform primary ballot, and few did.
This does not mean that they would not have voted for Ventura in a Top 2 Open Primary. Ventura had been elected mayor under a Top 2 election system. He certainly would have received more votes.
What part of the U.S.A. Const. states that X percent of ALL Electors-Voters in a party hack group have a *right* to put the party hack group nominees on the public ballots ???
P.R. and App.V = NO primaries, caucuses and conventions.
Fill legislative vacancies via candidate/incumbent rank order lists — or legislative body by default.
#14, Jesse Ventura’s candidacy was entirely due to the Reform Party having spent months trying to coax him to run as its gubernatorial nominee. It would never have crossed Jesse Ventura’s mind to run for Governor as an independent. He was loyal to the Reform Party and he consented to march in the party’s parade with some other potential Reform Party candidates. Everyone noticed that the crowd watching that part of the parade went wild when they saw Ventura, and the reaction to other potential Reform Party notables such as Dean Barkley couldn’t match the crowd’s response to Jesse. That’s where the party first got the idea to recruit Jesse, and effort that took them months of effort.
#16 Ventura had extremely short coattails, and there was no reason to vote in the Reform Party primary, even if you were enthused to see Jesse Ventura in a parade.
4 times as many voters voted in the Democratic primary as voted in the Republican primary, yet HHHIII finished 3rd in the general election.
If Minnesota had a Top 2 primary, more voters would have voted for Ventura in the primary, more would have voted for Coleman in the primary, fewer (or at least a smaller share would have voted for Democrats).
We know from the blanket primary in California in 1998 and 2000 that when there was only a single candidate from each party, that 3rd party candidates did better in the primary than in the general election.
It is your hypothesis that voters who support 3rd party and independent candidates won’t participate in an Open Primary. The evidence is to the contrary of your hypothesis.
#17, if Minnesota had had a top-two primary in 1998, Jesse Ventura would not have been in the November election. He was only at 10% in the polls in late September. That is the true evil of top-two systems; voters aren’t paying that much attention to minor party and independent candidates until after they see who the major parties have nominated. So under a top-two system, there is no time at which minor party and independent candidates get looked at. As a result, their ideas don’t circulate. The Libertarian candidate in the recent special election had some great ideas and he spent quite a bit of money. If he could be in the July election he would do well.
Also, your generalization in your 4th paragraph is not generally true. Ralph Nader got 1.5% in the blanket presidential primary in 2000 but in the general election he got 3.8%. Medea Benjamin, the Green running for US Senate, got 1.4% in the blanket primary but 3.1% in the general election. All of the Greens running in 2000 got significantly higher percentages in the general election than in the primary. That includes the US House races and the legislative races.
Also in 2000, Harry Browne got .27% in the blanket primary but .42% in the general election. Gail Lightfoot in the primary for US Senate got 1.64% in the primary but 1.77% in November.
#6 gr0ve st33t Says: May 21st, 2011:
“Most people really need to be specified some additional privacy ………”
Huh ??????? Governance in general, and Politics specifically, is a public activity with lots of spectator impact. Duh!
#18 If the 1998 election had been conducted under Top 2, Jesse Ventura would have campaigned differently.
Let me give you an analogy. Suppose we wanted to determine who would have won the 1971 NBA championship if the 3-point rule would have been in effect. With modern computer technology we can project a 3-point arc on the court. We can hire referees from the series, (assuming they are still living) to judge whether a shot was worth 3 points or not. We can project the score on the screen, and put down a new audio track.
But if we watched carefully, there would have been numerous instances where a shooter stepped on the arc. Or instances where defenders were guarding the passing lanes, and giving guards relatively open shots from 25-feet, but they weren’t taking the shots because the shots were only worth 2.
And then at the end of a game that was down by 3 points (because the other team had made 4 more 3FG, ran out the clock. You had a weird situation where the players from the losing team were shown celebrating the win, and the winners glumly filed off the court.
When Angus King was elected governor in Maine, he had deliberately campaigned and run advertising during a competitive Republican primary. Voters could not voter for him, but he got name recognition. I suspect if you had polled a month after the election, many voters would have insisted that they had voted for King in the primary, or that he was their second choice, and they were glad that he had made it through the first round.
Would Ventura have been elected? It is unknowable. He might not have run. He might have run differently. It is unlikely that he would not have realized the necessity to finish in the Top 2.
He might not have won the general election. Part of Ventura’s appeal was the phenomenal nature of his campaign. It might have been more difficult to sustain that for another 2 months. Ventura greatly benefited from same-day registration, where voters, particularly college students, who might not have registered or voted in a gubernatorial election would have done so.
#18 You are misunderstanding my argument with regard to the blanket primary.
Let’s take a look at the 1998 statewide elections. In the governors race, there were 6 D, 4 R, 1 AI, 1 G, 1 L, 1 NL, 2 PF. 5 of the 6 minor parties improved in the general election, and their collective share went from 3.48% to 3.65% (-0.30% for the G, +0.47% everyone else).
In the Lt. Governors race, there were 3 D, 4 R, 1 AI, 1 G, 1 L, 2 PF, 1 R. 4 of the 5 minor parties improved in the general election, while the P&F declined (they had a contested primary). The total share of the vote went from 8.64% to 8.49%, (+1.03% for the 4 single-candidate parties, -1.18% for the Greens.
In the Secretary of State race, there were 1 D, 1 R, 1 AI. 1 L, 1 NL, 2 PF, 1 Ref. All 5 minor parties declined, with their share of the vote declining from 10.81% to 7.12%, with a particularly sharp decline in the P&F vote from 2.45% to 0.98%.
In the Controller race, there were 1 D, 1 R, 1 AI, 1 Lib, 1 NL, 1 PF, 1 Ref. The vote share of all 5 minor parties declined, with a total share decline of 7.77% to 5.96%.
In the Governor and Lt.Governor’s race, some voters recognized that the blanket primary was making nominations, and they shifted into the Democratic and Republican and even the Peace&Freedom contests. In November, they decided to vote for a 3rd party candidate because they really didn’t like the Democrats and Republicans and P&F’ers.
They might have been busybodies who, even though vegan, would advise the couple at the next table which steak to order. Or they might actually have a preference. I know someone who thought that they should be able to vote in every mayoral election in every city that they could reach on election day. If there were a blanket primary, that would let them voter for one candidate of each party in every race, they would.
On the other hand, in the Secretary of State and Controller races, there were NO actual contests other than the battle for the P&F nomination for Secretary of State. Voters were more likely to vote for the 3rd party candidates in the primary.
There are three possible explanations. (1) 3rd party voters are more likely to show up for the primary. (2) Voters are willing to vote for 3rd party candidates, but in a decisive vote, want to make sure their vote counts. (3) 3rd party candidates don’t actively campaign until November. Once voters find out what they actually advocate they switch away.
I’ll go with explanation 2.
For a larger data set consider the 52 congressional seats in 2000. There were 25 districts were there was no contest for the Democratic or Republican nomination. In these 25 districts, there were 52 3rd party candidates. 27 did worse in the general election than the primary, 19 did better, and 6 did the same (SOS results show percentages to 1 decimal place, eg 1.66% = 1.7%).
In the other 27 districts there was a contest for the Democratic and/or Republican nomination. In these 27 districts, there were 60 3rd party candidates. 48 did better in the general election, 8 did the same, and only 4 did worse.
So if there was no actual primary contest, and the identical candidates appeared on the ballot in the primary and general election, 3rd party candidates did worse in the general election 52% of the time.
When there was an actual primary contest, 3rd party candidates did worse in the general election only 7% of the time.
In the 2000 presidential preference primary, the Republican race was still open, and Bill Bradley was still on the ballot on the Democratic side. More Green Party members voted for a Democrat or Republican than they did for Ralph Nader.
In the Senate primary, there were 2 D, 6 R, 1 AI, 2 G, 1 L, 1 NL, and 1 Ref candidate. Medea Benjamin was not even the only Green candidate. All 5 3rd parties did better in the general election than they did in the primary.
Voter behavior in a blanket primary is not the same as in an Open Primary. The closest would be when the candidate lists were the same for the primary and general election. Voters would be more likely to vote based on who they thought should be the officeholder, rather than who they thought should be the nominee.
This all goes to prove why California needs to repeal proposition 14 now.
Due to AUTOMATIC gerrymanders in CA (and many other regimes), the top 2 primary is de facto WORTHLESS — except perhaps when 2 Donkeys/Elephants get nominated — so the voters can vote for the lesser EVIL party hack robot in the general election.