Prop 14, Maldonado’s jungle primary law, is getting pulled in all sorts of directions over the last few days. As mentioned in the open thread last night, CSEA filed suit to change the ballot title and summary, claiming that the language as written by the Legislature was biased. Thing is, everybody in the Legislature, except Maldonado, hates Prop 14. Rather than spending their own resources to fight the legal battle, they simply agreed to settle the case. Here’s the complaint (PDF).
Now, however, Arnold wants to intervene in the lawsuit, saying that the Legislature is just trying to kill the measure with the settlement. Boo-hoo, poor Arnold. Unsurprisingly, the Legislature wasn’t really down with the attention that they were getting, so Leg Counsel wrote a letter supporting Arnold’s intervention in the lawsuit (PDF).
Thing is, the ballot title and summary are really ridiculous. First, the measure went outside of the normal process. Instead of going through the AG’s office, the Legislature itself wrote the summary and title. While the AG process occasionally results in somewhat favorable titles to left-leaning initiatives, and not so good titles for right-leaning measures, there is always some relation to a provable reality. In other words, there is concrete facts that the AG can point to for his interpretation. But check out this monstrosity:
ELECTIONS. PRIMARIES. GREATER PARTICIPATION IN ELECTIONS. Reforms the primary election process for congressional, statewide, and legislative races. Allows all voters to choose any candidate regardless of the candidate’s or voter’s political party preference. Ensures that the two candidates receiving the greatest number of votes will appear on the general election ballot regardless of party preference. Fiscal Impact: No significant net change in state and local government costs to administer elections.
“Greater Participation in Elections”? What they didn’t want to name it the Mom’s Apple Pie Measure? Or was that already taken?
Fact is that Prop 14 won’t really make much of a difference in how the Legislature works. It will simply favor more “establishment” candidates that can raise a bunch of money to horde media time. So, if you’re looking for a not all that less partisan, but way more corporatist government, well, Prop 14 is for you!
Otherwise, it’s a heaping helping of confusion, played up by goo-goos that haven’t really spent much time looking into how the system actually plays out in reality.
No one really knows, but we do have some historical data to look at. In 2008, there were 11 primary elections in which the top two vote-getters were from the same party. In 2006, there were 21 such races. Under Prop. 14, the two primary candidates who get the most votes are the nominees for the general election.
Of the 11 races in 2008, 10 were in Democratic districts and only 1 was in a Republican district. in 2006, 20 were in Democratic districts and 1 was in a Republican district.
Assuming these kinds of ratios continue, the open primary will be a boon to moderate Democrats, who will get a second life in the General Election. It presumes that the moderate Democrat will be the candidate most likely to win Republican votes in November.
It’s worth noting that in many of these races, there was no Republican presence at all. The thing is, as the Republican Party becomes weaker and weaker, the Democratic Primaries become more and more important.
Writers at CAIVN.org (trying to be the calitics for Independent voters) are loving Prop 14.
Not that this writer seems to really understand that the problem is ideological more than geographic.
I am not sure just how much influence they will have, but it is an effort to pull the growing roll of independent voters in that direction.
On the other hand, the General Assembly of the Green Party, meeting in San Jose this weekend, took official position in favor of Prop 15 and against Prop 14. There is little or nothing that Prop 14 does that is positive that can not be done with IRV.