The California Proposition 14 Top Two Open Primary election system will produce definitely and obviously wrong results with ordinary, likely voting scenarios. It will cause the election of representatives who are not the best choice of voters and don't well represent their desires or that of their district or the whole state. Examination of a simple test case will clearly demonstrate this. There are many other good arguments against Prop. 14, but producing bad results is the most egregious flaw. Opponents of Proposition 14 should consider this their best argument.
It confounds me how a badly flawed proposal can pass the legislature by more than a 2/3 vote, and then even the arguments against it in the Official Voter Information Guide, and most opponents arguing the issue, fail to expose a serious flaw. All you have to do is test it with a reasonable scenario, and you will see that Prop. 14 doesn't make sense. Try this: A legislative district has 50% Democratic, 30% Republican, and 20% non-partisan voters. Five Democrats run for the office, and two Republicans -- more Democrats running in a Democratic dominated district just as you might expect. During the primary election, the five Democrats collectively get 60% of the vote, and the two Republicans get 40% of the vote. The two Republicans could easily be promoted to the general election, even though the two combined get less than a majority of the vote and the district is mostly composed of Democrats and independents. Does that make any sense at all?
An example vote that provides the above result is: Republican #1 22%, Republican #2 18%, Democrat #1 16%, Democrat #2 14%, Democrat #3 12%, Democrat #4 10%, Democrat #5 8%.
The scenario simply says all the Democrats vote for a Democratic candidate, all the Republicans vote for a Republican candidate, and the independent voters split their vote half to the Democratic candidates and half to the Republican candidates. The two Republican candidates split the vote for Republicans 55% to 45%, and the five Democratic candidates split the vote for Democrats over a range of 30% for the top vote getter down to 15% for the lowest. There is nothing off in the weeds about this scenario that should cause a voting system to fault. Yet the Prop. 14 election system does fail. A Republican gets elected in this hypothetical district with 66% more Democrats than Republicans, even though none of the Democrats vote in the primary for a Republican.
With our existing voting system and the above scenario, it also can fail to promote the best person to represent all the voters and the district, which could easily be Democrat #2 or #3. But, at least it would put one Democrat into the general election, who most of the time would be the most favored candidate.
There is no perfect voting system, but a well designed Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) system is likely as close as we can get. If Prop. 14 required IRV for the primary election, then it might be be worth supporting. Learn about IRV at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRV. I say "well designed IRV" because most IRV systems in use also have a significant flaw that can produce wrong results, but that's a topic for another post.
I'm an intense advocate of radical reform of government processes, including many voting system reforms, and even major reform to our system of representation. Election reform is desperately needed, but it's important to do it well. Please oppose California Proposition 14 on the June 8th, 2010 ballot. It is severely flawed – worse than what we already have.
Reject Proposition 14!
Recommended Links:
Stop Top Two
SCA 4 Feb 19, 2009 ballot record for California Senate & Assembly (See how your representatives voted.)
Ballot Access News edited by Richard Winger
Friday, May 21, 2010
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