New, open primary would give voters wide choices

The Oakland Tribune
November 4, 2002

WHEN the California Supreme Court interceded into a partisan stalemate over legislative and congressional redistricting a decade ago, it disregarded effects on political parties or individual politicians and maximized the seats that could be won by anyone.

Having so many "swing districts" expanded voter choice and forced candidates to pay attention to broader voter spectrums, rather than rely on narrow partisan bases. That very democratic concept was expanded a few years later when California voters approved a "blanket" primary system that allowed any voter, including independents, to vote for any candidate, regardless of party affiliation.

The net effect was to increase the ranks of moderate state legislators in both parties, since term limits, adopted in 1990, were also causing turnover, and, for awhile, recreate the productive bipartisanship that once ruled the Capitol, before ideologues and partisan professionals took over.

Alas, it was only a brief moment of democratic sunshine. The two major parties and professional politicians of all stripes hated both independent redistricting and open primaries because they diluted insider control. Democratic and Republican leaders, who rarely agree on anything, joined hands to challenge the open primary in court. And two years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed, on a 7-2 vote, that the system interfered with the parties' control of their own nominating processes. A year later, party leaders forged a bipartisan deal on redistricting that reduced competition to the bare minimum.

The fruits of those two regressive acts are being seen this year. Legislative and congressional seats were, in effect, filled during the March primary, when only a tiny percentage of eligible voters cast ballots, and moderate candidates, true to expectations, were swamped by ideologically rigid competitors. The Legislature will have more liberal Democrats and more conservative Republicans and very few moderates. It's a double blow to democracy and the radical notion that voters should have real choices, not merely ratify candidates who have been anointed by party leaders and/or narrow interest groups.

The status quo redistricting scheme, which locks in partisan ownership of all but a handful of legislative and congressional seats, is engraved in law for the next decade. But could some form of moderate-friendly open primary elections return? California business leaders, alarmed at seeing so many business-hostile liberals win seats this year, are exploring a revival of the open primary in a unique form that would, they believe, pass muster with the Supreme Court.

Taking their cue from one passage of the Supreme Court decision, written by Justice Antonin Scalia, the business leaders want California to adopt a primary system in which all candidates are listed on one ballot for all voters and the top two finishers for any office, regardless of party, then have a runoff in November. Thus, voters would not be formally nominating a candidate for a party, which is the legal sticking point in the Supreme Court decision.

In some districts with lopsided party registrations -- those in the Bay Area, for example -- it's entirely possible that the runoff would feature two finishers from the same party. It's even possible that a third party candidate could make it into the runoff. No state has such a system now, but aspects are found in the open primary systems adopted by some states and the runoff system used in Louisiana.

Chief architect of the proposal is Tony Quinn, an oft-published political analyst who is advising the California Chamber of Commerce. He and Cassandra Pye, the chamber's political director, have been testing it in focus groups and shopping it to other business groups as a way of moderating the Legislature's shift to the left.

"All candidates would have to campaign to all the voters," says Quinn, adding that when the proposal is explained to samples of voters, "the less ideological they are the more they like this." He noted that the open primary proposal later rejected by the Supreme Court was popular with voters and had the effect of increasing turnout in 1998 and 2000, when it was in effect.

Pye says the chamber and other business groups are "thinking very seriously" about placing the new open primary before voters via initiative in 2004.