There are some things I like about the way California does its federal elections, but I definitely do not love one of the unintended consequences of their reforms. What’s different about California’s system is that they do not have party primaries. Anyone running for federal office enters a single primary and only the top two vote-getters appear on the general election day ballot. Therefore, the state regularly features elections where the voters are given a choice between either two Democrats or two Republicans.
Now, if we’re talking about a seat that is eighty or ninety percent Democratic, choosing between two Democrats may offer more of a choice to that district’s constituents. But there are cases where the seat is competitive but the voters don’t get a choice between a Democrat and a Republican because of something that has nothing to do with their preferences.
When one party offers significantly more candidates than the other, they can see their pie divided into so many small slices that none of their office-seekers can get enough votes to be in at least second place. For example, if seven Democrats are running against two Republicans, it’s easy to see how the overall vote for Democrats could be well north of fifty percent, even as the two Republicans wind up as the winners of the primary. The same thing can obviously happen in reverse, with the Democrats on the ballot despite the district having a clear Republican lean.
So, as a result, we have a new disturbing feature in our politics that revolves around trying to control how many candidates will run.
CA-39: State and national Democrats have not been quiet about voicing their fears that two Republicans could advance through the June top-two primary and lock Team Blue out of the general election for this open seat. Their math got a little easier hours before Wednesday’s filing deadline when education consultant Phil Janowicz announced he was dropping out in order to try and prevent this kind of disaster. When the dust settled, a total of nine Democrats, seven Republicans, and four others had filed to run, though election officials still need to verify that all these people submitted enough signatures.
It’s anyone’s guess what will happen in June, though if any Republicans are worried that they’ll be the ones locked out of the general, they’re being very subtle about it. Still, it’s worth noting that national Republicans reportedly tried to convince at least one candidate to drop out. Former state Senate Minority Leader Bob Huff took a little longer than his main intra-party rivals to file to run, and Around the Capitol’s Scott Lay wrote on Monday that he was “under big NRCC pressure to not do so.” However, Huff went ahead and filed anyway.
We talk a lot about how politicians choose their voters through gerrymandering districts rather than the voters choosing the politicians. And that’s a real shortcoming of our system that’s been getting worse with the aid of sophisticated computer programs. But the problem I’m describing here is similar. Parties are trying to win elections by gaming them out in the primaries so the opposing party will not even appear on the general election ballot. And, then, to avoid that happening to them, they’re trying to coerce people not to seek office.
This then gives people an opportunity to run for office not because they genuinely intend to run a serious campaign, but only so they can receive some kind of pay-off to drop out before their name can appear on the ballot. It’s an inherently corrupting system.
The system does have some positive aspects. It’s much easier for third-party candidates to get taken seriously and find themselves in one-on-one battles with one of the major parties. And this can create a more meaningful choice for the voters, too. A Republican isn’t going to beat Nancy Pelosi or Barbara Lee in the Bay Area, but it’s at least possible that a left-leaning third party candidate could do so. If nothing else, the threat can provide some kind of accountability which is what’s always lacking in these heavily Democratic districts.
Overall, though, there’s too much chance in this system. Candidates routinely qualify for the general election ballot not because of what they said or did but because dividing by seven produces a smaller number than dividing by four.
I haven’t thought too hard about how to fix this in any other way than just scrapping it entirely, but perhaps there are ways to tinker with the system to make it less capricious and corrupt, and less apt to take choices away from the electorate.
A transferable vote system would be preferable, but while jungle primaries on occasion produce pathological results, the large majority of the times they produce differences from the old party primary system it’s two competitors both from the district majority party, which means more of a choice in the general, not less, as party vs. party is almost always a foregone conclusion. It also really reins in the power of the party hierarchy, which is also mostly a boon. It’s a big improvement over the prior system.
IF there are seven candidates from the Democratic party, how likely is it that all seven run equally strong campaigns, and hence get close to equal votes, thus splitting up the Democratic votes?
More likely scenario is that there will be 3 strong candidates of one party, and there are only 2 strong candidates of the opposing party, and this leads to those 2 making it onto the final ballot.
I don’t see anyway to make it a lot more fair – any system can be gamed. Perhaps they need to put second preference votes and count those as well.
I think you’re thinking too hard.
Imagine the following scenario where we used this system for presidential primaries.
Sanders and Clinton split their votes at around 44-56.
Let’s say that in a jungle primary, Democrats make up exactly half the votes. So, Sanders gets 22 and Clinton gets 28.
Now imagine that all the Republicans are on the ballot all the way through, so no drop-outs. They had like 17 candidates. No way Trump carries more than 22 percent of the TOTAL vote, including the Democratic votes.
The election becomes one between Clinton and Sanders.
Not only does that eliminate a choice for about half the country, but it’s not clear that Trump wouldn’t have gotten more votes if pared up against just Sanders.
The reason Trump wouldn’t win is because people like Rick Perry and Chris Christie chewed up too many GOP votes. Just as there was a big pool of anti-Hillary votes, there was a big pool of anti-Jeb votes, but those votes would not be diluted on the Democratic side.
Therefore, you wind up with a result that is more an artifact of the number of candidates on each ideological side than of anything the candidates actually did or said.
Evenly split districts are the exception. Most districts have a distinct partisan lean, and the result is that the winner of the majority party primary almost automatically gets the seat. Minority party adherents have no voice at all. With a jungle primary, sometimes you end up with two candidates from the majority party, meaning the minority party adherents sometimes do get to influence the outcome.
You’re also neglecting that even in your proposed scenario an election of Hillary vs. Sanders means a non-negligible chance Sanders could have been elected. The Sanders campaign would have been a lot more meaningful, and that kind of possibility gets a lot more people involved in politics. I actually have a generally apathetic friend who got actively involved in one of these “minor” Congressional campaigns and is now still involved even though his candidate dropped out.
In addition, your outcome is quite rare. IIRC, it’s happened once in over 200 California elections that the general was intraparty and that party wasn’t basically guaranteed to win anyway. Against that rare outcome, we have a large increase in representation and participation for minority and splinter views, reduced power for the party hierarchy, better controls on corruption, and more interesting campaigns. It’s a huge net win.
Also, while you’re spinning hypotheticals about a primary system that might result in a minority party winning a race, perhaps you should discuss the problems with a primary system that results in a demented and profoundly corrupt man with strong ties to a noxious foreign regime becoming President? With a frequency considerably higher than a minority party win in CA, based on an admittedly small sample.
I think you need to show this is more than a theoretical problem. In 2016, for state elections there were 20 districts with 2 Dems and 6 with two Reps. 54 were mixed, 14 legislators were unopposed.
Exactly.
I’m trying to puzzle out exactly what the “problem” is here.
If the problem is that there is no guarantee that one member of each party get on the ballot, well, that was kind of the point.
All around the country, districts have been drawn up to lock out one party or the other. The result is that the winner of the partisan primary becomes the de-facto general election winner. This advantages extreme candidates, who never have to appeal to the center even by the standards of their own community. Put two Republicans on the general election ballot in a 60% Republican district and suddenly they have a reason to appeal to the 40% that have been ignored in the past.
Far from being an “unintended consequence” of the system, this point was widely debated at the time.
I think the jungle primary is an effort to force candidates to appeal to a broader (more centrist) section of the population — and to avoid the extremes of either party to dominate. But a solution to the problem that Booman highlights maybe be more signatures needed to qualify for the ballot. Here where I live it’s pretty easy to get the required number of signatures — maybe too easy.
Washington has top two primaries. Open seats are a free-for-all in the primaries. Ordinarily, the cream rises to the top because the fund-raising moves toward the strongest candidate.
Sometimes we get stuck with two members of the same party. We deal with it.
ummmmm…having lived in CA and voted in Jungle Primaries the problem is possibly more sophisticated than stated by Booman.
If you LIKE someone, you have no problem voting. If, however, you don’t care for anyone …
When I voted Jungle, I rarely voted FOR anyone. Quite frankly, I didn’t like anyone I knew who was running. Most of the people running were total unknowns outside a very small coterie. I looked for the person I disliked most … and voted for the nearest position that I didn’t know.
It would be interesting to match up the positional values of the primary candidates vs their expected results.
New headache for Pennsylvania GOP: Rep. Ryan Costello mulls retirement
Of course.
Who would the GOP get to run if Costello retired? Is it too late to get a candidate on the primary ballot? Would the state GOP appoint someone to run?
This is great!
Get the parties out of politics!
Get the politicians out of politics!
Get the politics out of politics!
That’s the way forward.
The whole point of the current primary system was to promote “moderate” candidates… I think it was put in place somewhat in response to the Republican party going off the rails. Like most of the propositions here, the actual results are probably a mixed bag. So far, there haven’t been that many races with candidate’s from the same party. Unfortunately, just like the old system, what it probably does mostly is promote wealthy candidates so it can’t be considered that much of an improvement. Like, for example, lottery winner Gil Cisneros in Ca 39, who carpetbagged into the district and is being promoted by the DCCC because he has the two features that they love most about in a candidate- he’s an ex-Republican, and he’s got money.
Really, California needs to implement some sort of ranked voting system to handle the cases where you have multiple candidates that garner about equal support. Unfortunately, I don’t think anybody at the moment wants to explain how a new system like that would work to California’s nearly 20 million voters and you also have the fact that politicians who got elected by the current system tend to want to keep things the way they are. Still, if there is an unfortunate election result this cycle, someone can always start a proposition…
A left-leaning third party candidate could not beat Nancy Pelosi or Barbara Lee. Not in the primary, not in the general. That’s crazy talk, absent some major, major scandal which does not seem to be in the cards for either of them.