☆ Leaders chime in on lessons from CA16 primary & recount farrago
Image by Joe Shlabotnik
While the CA16 voting drama plays out, local political watchers opine that perhaps California's voting protocols could use some updating. Lance Christensen VP of Education Policy and Gov't Affairs at California Policy Center and Brian Hoeltz of the Santa Clara County Libertarian Party, below. An Opp Now exclusive.
Lance Christensen:
It's a unique situation in that we have three savvy politicians vying for a sure-shot progressive seat. From a pure political angle, Simitian probably doesn't care if he runs against one or two other candidates, he probably has the strongest base. Liccardo is probably the most nervous, in that his high name recognition hasn't translated into leadership positions. And Evan Low is probably unsure, as his political tenure in Sacramento is shorter and more checkered than either Simitian's or Liccardo's.
But this is the time to be serious about election credibility. When there's a tie there should be a recount. It's not a hard task: it's easy to get the ballots, it's all being done in the middle of a big metropolitan area. They can turn this around in a matter of hours and leave all the drama behind them. We're spending more time debating it in newspapers than actually doing it.
But the tie result and recount drama does underscore one of the problems with the Top-Two, or Jungle primary system. This Top-Two approach was supposed to attract more moderate candidates and give smaller parties a bigger voice. That's not happening. Minority parties have zero opportunity to influence the debate, and there's hardly any opportunity for real, constructive policy discussion. The Primary Season is only two months long, and that favors money and clickbait headlines. The General is all about winning, so there's hardly any substantial discussion about schools, about transportation spending, about housing spending--issues that moderates are supposed to care about.
If we are serious about wanting a less partisan political environment, the Jungle system should go and we should go back to multi-party, closed primaries. Although I doubt that will happen because public unions and progressive special interests benefit from this current setup as they get to use the Democratic Party as cover for their extremist agendas.
--Lance Christensen is the VP of Education Policy and Gov't Affairs at California Policy Center
Read more here.
Brian Holtz (on Twitter X)
CA16 recount is a clear indictment of CA's top-two voting, which is just a lobotomized & glacial version of a better option: instant runoff AKA ranked choice. The most democratic system is Quadratic Voting, but even we elected Libertarians worry about having that much democracy.
--@brianholtz1965
Brian Holtz is the Santa Clara County Libertarian Party secretary and Purissima Hills Water District director
Read more here.
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