Everybody seems to be flogging the top-two primary system that has been instituted in California and Washington state as the antidote to hyper-partisanship and gridlock.
I favor the top-two system, but not because I think it is some great cure for hyper-partisanship. I just think it gives voters better choices. For example, if you live in Oakland, California, why do want to have an election between Rep. Barbara Lee and a Republican? What’s the point? Rep. Lee is going to win with 80% or more of the vote. But how about she has to face a green party candidate in the general election? Now the people of Oakland can have a debate between two people who both might be acceptable to them. The same thing is true in some of the farming districts on the Nevada border. Those constituents might prefer to have two Republicans debating policy rather than having to listen to a Democrat who has no chance. The top-two system also makes it easier for third, fourth or fifth party candidates to get on the primary ballot, and therefore easier for them to get heard. They are much less likely to act as spoilers that harm the most viable candidate on their side of the right/left divide.
Most important than the top-two innovation is taking redistricting out of the hands of the politicians and putting it in the hands of a independent citizens board. Despite being the biggest state with the most congressional districts, and despite the massive turnover in the 2006, 2008, and 2010 elections, California lost almost no incumbents in that period. Most of the members they did lose, they lost to aging or scandal. But, in 2012, after the redistricting and top-two system were in place, there was quite a lot of reshuffling.
I don’t know how much these changes can improve the national political divide, but I like them without regard to that. I think California is functioning today primarily because the Democrats have supermajorities in the state congress and Jerry Brown is the governor. If Obama had those kind of majorities, no one would be talking about partisanship and gridlock. They’d be talking about progress.
Funny you should mention that; Steve M. at No More Mister Nice Blog just yesterday had some things to say about possible downsides of that model:
http://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2013/10/if-wed-had-jungle-primaries-in-2010.html#links
I’d be wary of studies of the top-two primary because the sample size is so small and the hoped for changes could need time to materialize.
As I said, though, I don’t like the system because I think it produces more moderate politicians. I like it because it increases choice and presents better choices. We might lose some contests because the opponents are less dreadful, or are at least acting less dreadful. But, I don’t think what we’re talking about here is the best way to advantage the left. We’re talking about a better system.
In the example that Steve M. gives with Dewhurst now calling for impeachment, that incentive would be reversed in the top-two system because Dewhurst would be going after Democrats to put himself over the top. That’s kind of the point of the reforms from the point of view of the people who think it will moderate the tone of politics.
Take the example of a suburban Democratic congressperson whose district is about 65% Democratic, and therefore considered safe.
A Democratic challenger in a general election would have 35 of the Republican vote to work for. If they could get all of them, they’d only need a quarter of the Democratic votes to win.
A real contest probably wouldn’t work out that way, but it shows how more conservative voters would have significant influence in such a contest as opposed to the zero influence they have now. And the same thing can said in reverse for many Republican seats in the 60-70% range. You wouldn’t see it as a straightforward contest to prove yourself the most conservative candidate in the race. And, once elected, the more moderate Republican would have to maintain their support with the Democrats who put them in office.
That’s how it is supposed to work, anyway. But, again, that’s not why the system appeals to me.
Take the example of a suburban Democratic congressperson whose district is about 65% Democratic, and therefore considered safe.
A Democratic challenger in a general election would have 35 of the Republican vote to work for. If they could get all of them, they’d only need a quarter of the Democratic votes to win.
Who says most GOPers would vote for him? Why wouldn’t they leave the ballot blank in that spot? You forget about some places down South. Do you remember how bat guano crazy Paul Broun originally arrived at the House of Representatives?
Broun’s opponent called for razing Athens to the ground and keeping only their football team. I don’t think that was a case where there was a more moderate candidate.
Right .. they are both bat guano crazy … Broun was just smart enough to get elected before he opened his mouth
A couple of years ago Washington state adopted the top-two system. I was against it because I feared it was a fiendish plot by Republicans to keep Libertarians off the ballot in November. Libertarians tend to suck votes from Republican candidates and that puts the GOP at a disadvantage. (See Washington’s Senatorial election of 2000 for example. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate_election_in_Washington,_2000 )
So far, my fears have not been realized…
Also, a few years ago, the King County Council became “nonpartisan”. (King County is Washington’s biggest county and includes Seattle.) Party affiliation would no longer be listed on the ballot. Republicans liked this idea because then fewer voters would know they’re Republican.
I was wary of the top two system at first, but now I like it. I’m not as crazy about the non-partisan aspect, though. It does allow Republicans to hide their affiliation in places where that is an issue, but overall the voters seem very able to suss out who is the Democrat. Washington State also does not let voters declare their party affiliation, so that makes it harder to ID who are the Dems, but that’s reasonable, too. It’s the vote by mail that is the shining star of election reform. We don’t have a citizen board to handle redistricting yet, but we’re one step closer than states that let their congress do it. We have a bi-partisan committee that does some horse-trading to draw the lines. But they are constrained by rules that require contiguous districts and equal population restrictions, so they can’t draw funny-shaped districts that corral minorities into voting blocks. It’s not a perfect system, but it’s light years ahead of most states.
The top-two system could wipe out Republicans on the west coast. As in, cause them to close their offices.
I have absolutely no problems with this.
As a California resident, I think you’re absolutely right about the top-two system, except that you miss two more advantages. First, with a top-two system there are more competitive general elections and so more reasons to vote. Second, it accentuates divisions within the parties, so it cuts back the monolithic quasiparliamentary parties, which cause problems in our government system.
Basically, since we have a governmental system which isn’t supposed to have parties, it’s only to be expected we do better with a primary system that downplays them.
Our Founding Fathers considered the existence and power of political Parties. In the Federalist Papers and other writings, they had a variety of views about how the Constitution and other documents might be drawn up to support or dilute their power, but I don’t see support for the claim that our “governmental system…isn’t supposed to have parties…”.
BooMan is objectively wrong in one of his presumptions about our top two general elections for Legislative and Congressional elections in California:
“The top-two system also makes it easier for third, fourth or fifth party candidates to get on the primary ballot, and therefore easier for them to get heard.”
In practice for the first time in 2012, exactly the opposite happened. Almost no alternative party candidates made it onto the November ballot; many, many more were on the ballot under the old system. Certainly none put up a serious challenge at all. I am a constituent of Rep. Lee’s, and I don’t know that BooMan’s attempt to use our District’s as an example works out well in practice. Barbara faced an Independent candidate who gained no attention at all, and she won 87% of the vote.
Our new system created a different type of spoiler in 2012. In a couple of swing Districts, at least one of which had a plurality of Democratic Party voters, four or more Dems split their Party’s vote and two Republicans made it to November. That did not represent what these District voters would prefer in the general election policy debate, but it happened.
Many have speculated, and frankly I would prefer, that this system will provide powerful incentive for the big Parties to aggressively clear the field for their endorsed candidate. It seems much more likely to me that this would not create more moderate candidates, as the Party activists and leaders, along with their base voters, are the most important deciders of who we prefer on the liberal side.
One last thing I’d say about California: we have a pent-up desire to restore the terrific damage that was done to our budgets from a full decade of terrific Republican intransigence from the minority. It didn’t help that we had stupidly elected and re-elected Schwarzenegger, but the biggest problem was the inability to pass a responsible budget without Republican votes in the Legislature. Because of another stupid vote which required 2/3rd majorities to raise revenues or pass a budget, Republicans were able to reduce the total budget by about 20% even though Californians had put large majorities in the Legislature.
Think the Federal government shutdown we just went through, except for that it happened in California many years in a row and the budget rules allowed Republicans to take absolute maximum policy wins from their minority status. Democrats aren’t much in the mood to elect moderates in most of our Districts; we’ve been moderated for far, far too long.
In fact, Governor Brown remains as a powerfully moderating force now. He’s five worlds better than a Governor Meg Whitman would have been, but there’s a cap on what we can do based on Jerry’s whims. I don’t believe the Legislature passed any new taxes at all this year; the only State revenue increase was created by a Proposition where Californians, by a 10-point margin, voted to tax ourselves at a rate of about $7 billion of new revenue a year. Now THAT’s pent-up demand for more liberal governance.
Take a look at Henry Waxman’s electoral history or Pete Stark’s.
You don’t need to tell me about Pete Stark; he was my Representative before the last redistricting. He had problems that were much more substantial than his new District, chief among them being age-related illness and a couple of extremely immoderate public statements which, together, essentially prevented Pete from campaigning last year.
All the same, BooMan, bringing evidence from two out of 53 California CD’s does not supply strong support for your premise here. I agree that it was good to change the incumbency protection program which was the previous Legislature-controlled redistricting process. Slightly reduced incumbency security does not automatically translate to results which meet your expectations here, however.
One last major thing that led to Rep. Stark’s defeat: the newspapers and television stations smelled blood in the water, and since Stark was the only incumbent in the Bay Area who appeared to have any challenge at all, they concentrated their fire on the juicy story, “40-year incumbent in deep trouble”.
Pete didn’t take too well to that, and responded to journalists’ policy-free, horse-race-obsessed questions with a couple of insults. Well, THEN they really piled on. Having made strong friends over the decades, Stark had also made strong enemies, and they were motivated to work for Swalwell (who was appealing, hard-working and ran a good campaign) in order to take Pete out. The campaign dynamics just got away from him in the end.
I have been following you long enough to remember your reaction when California first enacted this primary system. You weren’t pleased with it at the time.
You argued, among other things, that voters who liked third parties (people like me) should be unhappy with the system since it meant that they would never be able to vote for their candidates in November. It seemed like an odd argument for you to making, since you generally are critical of third party candidates (at least left-leaning ones). That’s probably why I remembered the post so well.
So what has changed your mind? And does it really matter either way for third party voters? Their candidate either gets smothered in the first round or the second round.
Or if you live in red dumbfuckistan USA, you get a choice of a…teabagger nihiist Republican or a teabagger nihilist Republican.
Woohoo.
Way to fuck over a lot of folks who don’t live in the bluest districts.
Or as could well happen here in my own district, which is competitive:
Three decent Dems run and two nihilist republican knuckle draggers. Booyah a barely Dem district gets the choice of a…teabagger nihiist Republican or a teabagger nihilist Republican.
All the ‘top two’ system will ever produce are machine politicians, vigorously promoting only one candidate per party.
No such thing as happy fun time gumdrop unicorn love world of comity politics