California Prop 14 Passed - 'Top Two' Primaries Soon A Reality
 

Will California?s ?Top Two? Primary Work? - Jun 2010

California voters on Tuesday approved Proposition 14, which replaces traditional partisan primaries in state and Congressional races. Starting in 2011, candidates for an office would be on a single ballot, regardless of political affiliation, and the top two vote-getters (even if from the same party) would advance to the general election. In recent years, a similar ?top two? primary system was adopted in Washington State.

If this measure survives legal challenges, whom will it benefit? If the idea spreads to more states, what effect will this system have nationally? What races would it affect most?

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:2 cents: I literally have no opinion on this yet. What do you guys think? Will it work? And is it a good thing?

This is not a good idea.... it means that republican voters can vote on the democrat that they think is LEAST likely to win, in order to weaken their chances in the general election... It also makes it so that the candidate who actually represents the locals in that party will not nessecarily be the one to win.


...and this goes both ways, obviously...

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It's going to make elections VERY messy and a lot less representative IMHO


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That's exactly the reason I am a registered republican. :1orglaugh

See? YOU are the guy I'm talking about....

:winkwink:

With this California system, EVERYONE would be messing with the opposing party's choice of candidate.


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Might be a great way to get rid of a few lame incumbants in California

Hmmm... yeah, it seems like there would be a lot of room for sneaky stuff.

Can you imagine the presidential general election doing this? It would turn the country upside down.

Incumbents in california historicaly always win becuase the disctricts are rigged that way. I hate californias Dem leadership. Need new people in the legislature

Why limit it to the two top candidates. Make it 3 or 4.

People always bring up the argument of "voting for the other guy", but how often does it actually happen? I mean really?

If it's the top two that move on why would you vote for another candidate than your own?

Conceivably you could have two Democrats winning and running against each other with no Republican representation in the general election. A Republican that tries to sabotage the Democrats by voting for an unelectable Democrat will only hurt his candidate's chances of moving on.

Or am I missing something?

I was thinking that too... and also, if it did end up where both candidates were from the same party, what incentive do the people not represented still have to vote?

It would lead to the opposition party voting for the worst candidate so they would lose in the next election. You have dem1 and dem2. Dem1 is voted for by dems. Dem2 gets a few dem votes + repub votes. Dem2 wins and no one is happy other than repub's who now have someone to bitch about.

but the peoples vote doesnt really count in pres elections, our vote is only to complete the facade that we have a say in who our president is.

I think there would always be a 'sore-loser' public sentiment though... except instead of after the election, the crying would begin before the election. It still seems weird to me that Cali passed this.

EDIT: I wonder how it's working out so far in Washington state. I don't follow their politics.

I think there could be a lot of scenarios depending on how many candidates there are. Ignore parties for a minute. If there are 6 left leaning candidates and only 2 right leaning then it's possible that the 2 right leaning get most of the votes since the 6 on the left split theirs up.

Another scenario is there are many center candidates (lets say 8), one extreme right and one extreme left. Under normally circumstances the two extreme candidates might not be electable but if the 8 center candidates fight for the same votes the two extremes could be the ones moving on.

In this system the party that brings the fewest candidates to the primaries benefits.

Won't if force people who want things a certain way to actually have no excuse but to get involved now and vote?