[EM] How would you fix California's top two primary?

[VoteFair]

On 1/10/2017 6:03 AM, Erik Moeller wrote:

Practical questions for this group:
- Do you think this system would benefit from iterative improvements?
- If so, what would those changes look like?


Is going back to party-based primary elections with 1-2-3 ballots and 
pairwise counting an iterative improvement?  If so, that's what I would 
recommend.

An open primary (of the type used in CA) is vulnerable to the following 
strategy.  If there are more Democratic voters, then Republicans can 
offer just two candidates and quietly fund "spoiler" Democratic 
candidates.  That means there would be 4 Democratic candidates and 2 
Republican candidates.  Because single-mark ballots are used, and 
vulnerable to vote splitting, the likely result would be that both 
runoff candidates will be the two Republicans, and then a Republican is 
sure to win, even though that's exactly the opposite of what a fair 
election would yield (if there are more Democratic voters).

I think the most important point is that there would be no "need" (or 
advantage) to open primaries if primaries used fair ballots and fair 
counting.  In other words, this open-primary "reform" is only seen as 
worthwhile because primary elections use primitive single-mark ballots 
that are so easily taken advantage of.

As a reminder, the whole point of primary elections is to avoid 
vote-splitting in general elections because general elections use 
single-mark ballots.

Why do so many election "reformers" suggest changes that continue to use 
single-mark ballots?  Single-mark ballots are the source of the 
unfairness, and REAL reform HAS to use something better than single-mark 
ballots.

Richard Fobes


On 1/10/2017 6:03 AM, Erik Moeller wrote:
> Since a 2010 ballot initiative [1], California uses a nonpartisan
> blanket primary for non-presidential elections. This means that
> candidates from all parties and independent ones run against each
> other in a primary round, and the top two advance to the general
> election.
>
> Multiple candidates from the _same_ party can run in the primary,
> meaning that you may have vote splitting effects. Frequently, the top
> two general election candidates are from the same party. This is by
> design, though it remains to be seen how voters would respond to e.g.,
> two gubernatorial choices from the same party. You can see some
> example results here:
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_State_Assembly_election,_2016
>
> An interesting effect you can see here is the large number of
> candidates who make it to the general election on a fraction of
> write-in votes. Some of these districts would likely have been
> uncontested in prior elections. For example, Angela Rupert from
> District 46 got 131 (!) write-in votes, and managed to get 43.9% /
> 60,658 votes in the general. Quite a jump!
>
> There's a large turnout gap between primary and general, and the
> electorate is different. [2] As a consequence, small parties have
> generally feared a loss of visibility, and opposed such measures in
> the states where they have been proposed. The change certainly hasn't
> helped them in California so far -- only the Libertarians made a small
> showing in the 2016 elections, without any seats.
>
> Practical questions for this group:
> - Do you think this system would benefit from iterative improvements?
> - If so, what would those changes look like?
>
> It almost goes without saying that I think proportional representation
> voting is the most desirable long term change. But if there are
> smaller changes that would improve this system in the near term, CA
> may be a viable target for reform, by law or by ballot initiative.
>
> Personally, I think the vote splitting and spoiler effects in the
> primary stage are problematic, and having candidates from the same
> party in the general is undesirable. The use of fractions of write-in
> votes also seems hackish and suggests ballot access problems in the
> primary stage. I can imagine multiple ways to address this, but I'd be
> curious what this group thinks.
>
> Warmly,
> Erik
>
> [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_14_(2010)
> [2] http://www.ppic.org/content/pubs/report/R_514EMR.pdf
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