{"id":11846,"date":"2010-06-10T00:46:16","date_gmt":"2010-06-10T00:46:16","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2010-06-10T00:46:16","modified_gmt":"2010-06-10T00:46:16","slug":"what-if-prop-14-were-already-the-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/2010\/06\/10\/what-if-prop-14-were-already-the-law\/","title":{"rendered":"What if Prop 14 were already the law?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Prop 14 passed, alas. &nbsp;While it is difficult to judge exactly how things would have turned out in a truly open primary, if we combine the votes in the current semi-closed primaries, our general election run-offs would be Democrat vs Republican in every case.<\/p>\n<p>But, we came very close to that not being true. &nbsp;Kamala Harris, the Democratic winner in a wide-open primary, received 553,771 votes. &nbsp;The Republican runner-up received 532.623. &nbsp;Had an open primary had similar results, we were within 32,000 votes of having two Republicans running-off for state Attorney General. &nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Of course, in a more open primary, one wonders if Kamala Harris would have won. &nbsp;As Nate Silver points out <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fivethirtyeight.com\/2009\/02\/land-of-thousand-liebermans.html\">http:\/\/www.fivethirtyeight.com&#8230;<\/a> these open primaries tend to result in more centrist winners. &nbsp;Chris Kelly might have pulled more cross-over or Independent votes. &nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Then again, would we have seen so many candidates from one party? &nbsp;As a pure thought experiment, if one party has a 60-40 majority, and four equally popular candidates who split the vote, and the other party has two candidates who split the vote, the two minority party candidates are the two in the runoff. &nbsp;Would not the majority party encourage two or more of their candidates to stand down?<\/p>\n<p>The other losers are the current third parties. &nbsp;Here&#8217;s a list of candidates you will see on your November ballots who would not be there if Prop 14 had already been the law:<\/p>\n<p>Governor: &nbsp;Chelene Nightingale, Laura Wells, Dale F. Ogden, and Carlos Alvarez.<\/p>\n<p>Lt. Governor: &nbsp;Jim King, James Castillo, Pamela Brown, and CT Weber<\/p>\n<p>Secretary of State: &nbsp;Merton D. Short, Ann Menasche, Christina Tobin, and Marylou Cabral<\/p>\n<p>Controller: &nbsp;Lawrence G. Beliz, Ross D. Frankel, Andrew &#8220;Andy&#8221; Favor, and Karen Martinez<\/p>\n<p>Treasurer: &nbsp;Robert Lauten, Charles &#8220;Kit&#8221; Crittenden, Edward M. Teyssier, and Debra L. Reiger.<\/p>\n<p>Attorney General: Diane Beall Templin, Peter Allen, Timothy J. Hannan, and Robert J. Evans.<\/p>\n<p>Insurance Commissioner: &nbsp;Clay Pedersen, William Balderston, Richard S. Bronstein, and \tDina Josephine Padilla.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Prop 14 passed, alas. &nbsp;While it is difficult to judge exactly how things would have turned out in a truly open primary, if we combine the votes in the current semi-closed primaries, our general election run-offs would be Democrat vs Republican in every case.<\/p>\n<p>But, we came very close to that not being true. &nbsp;Kamala Harris, the Democratic winner in a wide-open primary, received 553,771 votes. &nbsp;The Republican runner-up received 532.623. &nbsp;Had an open primary had similar results, we were within 32,000 votes of having two Republicans running-off for state Attorney General. &nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2826,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1990],"tags":[8536],"class_list":["post-11846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1990","tag-8536"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pvhz-354","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2826"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11846"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11846\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}