Tweet
The long campaign trail: still long. (photo: camera_shy_gal)
Now that California has had its first Congressional race (in the 36th district) using the state’s new “top two primary” system, it is a good time to point out one of the major flaws with it is the incredibly long period between the primary and the general. The “primary” took place yesterday but the “general” isn’t until July 12, two months away. In a non-special election there will be five months between the top two primary and the general.
The thing about California’s new “top two primary,” where the two candidates that get the most votes regardless of party move on to the general, is it isn’t really a primary at all. Primaries are meant to be an election where a party’s members choose their nominee. America normally has a long time between primary elections and general elections. The logic behind this is that the campaign a candidate runs to win a party’s primary is much smaller and more narrowly focused on just the core members of their own party, so a candidate needs a lot time after that to switch to a much larger campaign focused on the whole electorate.
California now has a two-round election with a runoff.
What the top-two primary really does is basically eliminates any party nomination process in California. It also switches the state to a two-round runoff election system, like the French Presidential elections. But unlike France, which allows only two weeks between the first round and the runoff, in California, there will be months between the two rounds.
The supposed logic behind the switch to the top-two primary was to get all candidates to run their campaigns, from the start, directed at everyone in the district across the political spectrum, instead of first catering to the small group of primary voters in each party. So, the candidates are basically already running what we would consider big, expensive, general-election-style campaigns for the “primary,” and they will need to sustain this big, general-election-style campaign for the months until the runoff election.
Having the “top two primary” so many months before the general election just makes our painfully long campaign seasons even longer and political campaigns much more expensive. The two rounds should be held only weeks apart to make elections cheaper and reduce the never-ending campaign phenomenon.
8 Comments
Full employment jobs program for the political class. Candidates, media, pundits, consultants. What’s not to love? /s
I think a dose of political honesty is worth noting… CA went to top 2 because, in California, it is believed that Democrats can get the top 2 vote getters, leaving the Republicans out of the process altogether.
The policy merits of this notwithstanding…
what this may expose, however, is that the truly progressive candidates actually are able to garner only a small percentage of the actual primary vote… and may in fact result in fewer ‘true’ progressives being elected in California.
The only way to pull money of out politics, is to pull the money out of the hands of politicians… otherwise, Willie Sutton rules apply (because that’s where the money is).
End-on-end 6-figure consulting gig$ for the Hot Air Class. Meanwhile 3 US Administrations have aggressively enabled European organizations to buy up key US infrastructure/strategic operations, given the better-paid, unprotected American jobs to the European workers (LATimes.com, May 18, 2011 ; fie on law firm Jackson Lewis LLP) while the manufacturing goes to Asia and even more with the pending 3 FTAs. A past metric is that there was 1 US white collar job produced for every 5 US blue collar jobs but that’s had to have shrunk with the use of prison and offshore subsistence labor since there are not enough jobs for new graduates in India and China plus the shrinkage in non-FIRE jobs due to the increased “financialization” of India and China’s economies. We know what increasing financialization means– more use of prison and substitute labor globally and brought to you in part by corporate attorney firms that have lost their souls and their minds.
Exactly. In other words the top-two primary takes power away from the Democratic and Republican parties. Even if flawed, is that a bad thing?
Making running for office even more expensive putting even more power with the rich.
I think 2 months between the election and the run-off is about the right amont of time, because if there is a run-off there needs to be time to contest the results (recounts, etc). Plus it allows the voters a new look at the candidates when they are going head to head. I do agree with the article, 5 months seems to be too long, and expensive. This system doesn’t really remove power from the parties, but it does reward a candidate who does have the most grass roots support.
Barry makes me sick to my stomach.
The parties did not want this, it passed through a ballot initiative. You can blame the CA Dem party for plenty of things but not this.