June 7 Primary Exposed Drawbacks of California's Nonpartisan 'Top Two' System

June 7 Primary Exposed Drawbacks of California's Nonpartisan 'Top Two' System

If you need an example of just how befuddling California’s top-two primary system can be, consider the case of the $50,000 mailer sent to voters across 13 California counties in early June.

The mailer’s message: In the crowded race for a state Senate district that sprawls from Modesto to Truckee to the Owens Valley, the only “Democratic choice” — the one with a “progressive agenda” — was local labor leader Tim Robertson, not school administrator Marie Alvarado-Gil.

“We Trust Only Tim Robertson,” the mailer blared in large type.

There’s nothing unusual about campaign material touting one Democratic candidate over another. Except that this one was funded by a Republican. And not just any Republican, but GOP state Senate leader Sen. Scott Wilk.

There were six Republican candidates running in that central Sierra district, but none were the beneficiaries of Wilk’s outside political spending. Nor were any championed by another independent expenditure committee that poured $17,000 behind Democratic Party-endorsed Robertson after receiving nearly $50,000 from Wilk’s account.

Though ballots are still being tallied at registrar’s offices across the district, now it’s clear what Wilk was trying to do.

In the Republican-leaning 4th state Senate district, nearly 60% of voters in the most recent count checked their ballots for one of the half-dozen GOP candidates. But they diced up the vote into smaller slivers. The two Democrats, Robertson and Alvarado-Gil, only got 22% and 18% of the vote, respectively. But that was enough to put them in first and second place as of Wednesday.

The top Republican, former U.S. Rep. George Radanovich, is barely ahead of two others at 17% and insists the race is far from over. “We fully expect to be in the runoff,” said campaign manager Joe Yocca. “There are plenty of votes still left.”

Under California’s unusual top-two primary system, all candidates are listed on the same ballot and only the first- and second-place winners move on to the November general election, regardless of party affiliation.

By backing Robertson and knocking Alvarado-Gil as insufficiently progressive, Wilk was trying to concentrate the district’s Democratic voters on one candidate, thus pushing the second Democrat’s support beneath that of at least one Republican.

If the current results hold, he failed.

Wilk said he decided to fund the mailer after seeing “scary” polling numbers a couple weeks before the June 7 primary suggesting that the Republican candidates were at risk of cannibalizing the GOP vote. Earlier in the year, he tried to persuade some of those Republicans to drop out to avert exactly this scenario, he said.

But by early June, it was too late. One strategy would be to pick a favorite Republican and spend money to persuade right-of-center voters to get behind them. But that went against a promise Wilk said he made not to put his “thumb on the scale” for any one of the Republicans.

So, as a last resort, he tried putting his thumb on the scale for a Democrat.

Comparing the results to those early polling numbers, Wilk said Robertson’s vote share ticked up slightly. “So it worked a little bit, but obviously it didn’t work enough,” he said.

Oddly enough, the California Democratic Party also landed on the same strategy in the final weeks of the campaign. It spent roughly $50,000 boosting Robertson, believing that Alvarado-Gil was already safely in the top two. That Wilk seized on the same approach hoping to achieve the opposite outcome either speaks to a strategic miscalculation or terrifically bad luck.

“When you’re in the minority, you gotta think outside the box a little bit,” Wilk told CalMatters.

Wilk may have messed up, and too many Republicans may have entered the race. But in a broader sense, the upside-down results are the product of California’s decade-long experiment with a nonpartisan primary system — the top two.

Approved by voters in 2010 and rolled out for the first time statewide two years later, the system has changed state politics in many of the ways that its proponents promised at the time — and a few ways that they didn’t.

As supporters of the system claim, it’s offered an avenue for moderate members of both parties to amass more political power in the Legislature, while also giving “no party preference” voters — Californians who don’t belong to any party at all — a chance to participate in every major stage of the electoral process.

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There are a few reasons Democrats are trying to destroy our voting system - especially with the idiotic push to drop the electoral college and go to a popular vote. Between jungle primaries, ranked choice voting, destruction of our election laws, allowing foreigners to vote, to the top two system...

We use the electoral college for a damn good reason. It is so the large population states don't set the agenda for the entire country. The electoral college forces candidates to campaign in pretty much all states. It forces candidates to acknowledge that California, New York, Florida, Texas and Pennsylvania don't have the same issues that each state has, let alone states outside the large population states.







You may be wondering what the electoral college has to do with CA's state voting system. If we remove the electoral college and move to a popular vote, we have no recourse to stop the high population states, like California, from forcing their system onto every other state. Our system was designed to prohibit "tyranny by majority". Our system was designed to ensure that the minority opinion is heard. The 4 videos above give you a run down of the Electoral College, how it works, what it does and why it does it.

If the politicians get a popular vote, it will not matter what the other states think. The high population states will take all the focus and the rest of the states will be ignored. The voting system in CA is a perfect example of why it is a problem. Democrats control the Governor, and Democrats hold veto proof super majorities in both, their lower house and their upper house.

CA's lower house (State Assembly 80 seats) - Dems hold 60 seats and Reps hold 19
CA's Upper House (State Senate - 40 seats) - Dems hold 31 seats and Reps hold 9

Except for 1995-1996, Democrats have held power in CA since the early 1970's. The Democrats have held power in their Senate since 1970.

When government ignores the people, the people need to fire the politicians.

They say its suicide to run as a 3rd party candidate.