Emailed to [email protected]:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact:
Christina Tobin
(415) 599-5222
[email protected]
On Tuesday, June 8, California voters will decide the fate of Proposition 14, the controversial ballot measure also known as the Top Two Primaries Act. Two leading political scientists, Boris Shor and Seth Masket, have studied the polarization problem extensively. Their findings show that Proposition 14 will not solve California’s partisanship problem.
Political scientist Boris Shor studied polarization in the state legislatures of all 50 states over the last 15 years. Using Project Vote Smart questionnaires and roll call records, Shor found that California has the most polarized legislature. Washington State has the nation’s second most polarized legislature, and, ironically, Washington has used a blanket primary most of those 15 years and now uses a top-two system like Prop 14.
Political scientist Seth Masket is author of the book No Middle Ground: How Informal Party Organizations Control Nominations and Polarize Legislatures. Masket studied Shor’s data and declared there is no correlation at all between openness of primary and polarization of that state’s legislature. He noted that Ohio and Wisconsin are also highly polarized, which use classic open primaries.
Seth Masket commented on the Shor chart in his blog Enik Rising, “Given that other evidence about primaries and partisanship suggests little relationship between the two, I doubt the initiative would have anything close to the impact its backers suggest.”
“There is no evidence that this type of system helps the polarization problem,” stated Christina Tobin, chair of StopTopTwo.Org. “It’s almost like the Pro Prop 14 crowd is trying to convince Californians the world is flat.”
Question. If prop 14 is such a power grab by the main parties, why do both the republican party voters guide and the democratic party voter’s guide both say to vote no (along with the libertarian party voter’s guide.) These seems very confusing. Any ideas?
The last sentence is mine and the Donklephant quote ends above that with this sentence, which is worth repeating:
“Independents that support this bill should be ashamed of themselves.”
Sorry.
“When politicians have to compete for our votes, we win.”
Frankly, I didn’t read anything above that and I don’t need to.
A Democrat running against another Democrat in the November election is not a competition for my independent, decline-to-state, vote. That is not a competitive election. It leaves out millions of voters who won’t like either of the top two rich or famous bought and sold politicians from the June free for all election with a 25% tunrout.
As for whatever you wrote above, I’ll let someone else speak to why even paying attention to that is something not worth my time. From Donklephant:
http://donklephant.com/2010/06/06/the-%E2%80%98first-do-harm%E2%80%99-act-%E2%80%93-ca-prop-14/
I wont be nearly the first person to be writing about California’s Proposition 14. I’m coming late into the game, having only listened to the vague positive talking points of the California Independent Voter Network (CAIVN), and their allies, who have talked this proposition up. But I began to see some dissent, and took at a look at it myself. To be blunt, if this passes, partly because of support from CAIVN and their allies, I will genuinely be embarrassed to affiliate myself with these organizations that I hold in very high regard for their work fighting for the rights of independents.
…
This proposition flat out screws the minor parties. This glaring selfishness is made embarrassingly worse by the fact that several independent supporters I have communicated with, or read explanations of their reasoning for support, of the proposition have actually touted this as a way of further marginalizing these minor parties. This rings of a bully at school taking his anger out on even smaller kids because his bigger brothers have been beating on him for years. In fact, this is precisely what this is.
I’m not going to split hairs on this issue. Independents that support this bill should be ashamed of themselves.
Its time for a new independent voter intitative in California because yours sucks.
I posted this earlier tonight on a Green Party Blog. Thought it would be a good rebuttal to the nonsense above. – Jason
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Prop 14 would not “wipe out” the Green Party of California. Prop 14 could in fact save a Green Party that is being strangled by the current partisan primary process.
Since 2004, the Green Party’s voter registration base in California has declined over 28% and now stands at just over 112,000 voters (during this same period, Decline to State voters grew 38% to over 3.4 million voters). This year, out of 80 Assembly district races, the Green Party will only run one candidate. Out of the 53 Congressional races, the Green Party will manage to compete in only 5 races. 2008 saw a similar picture for Green Party candidates.
Why are voters leaving the Green Party? Let’s take a look at what it is like to be a Green Party voter. In the primary, most Green Party voters will see zero candidates for state office, because the Greens don’t run anyone. And these voters do not have the option to participate in any other party’s primary. In the general election with gerrymandered election districts, there is no incentive for the majority party to care about their votes.
Thus to be a Green Party voter is to be locked in a perpetual cycle of “protest”. Unfortunately since the Greens don’t really run any candidates and with the way the major parties have gamed the system, it’s a completely powerless protest. Add in the fact that once the Republican and Democratic Party nominees have been anointed in the partisan primary, those nominees then use their leverage against the debate sponsoring organizations to exclude third party candidates, and the voice of third parties is relegated to being all but irrelevant under the current system.
Now imagine Prop 14 passes. The Green Party can still run it’s handful of candidates in the first round of elections. Given there will be no Republican or Democratic “party” nominees to blockade third party candidates from debates, minor party candidates will very likely find their way into them (as they did in the 2003 Recall Election). Where the party either runs no one (as is mostly the case), or their candidate does not advance to the second round, the local party can then do something incredible. It can use the leverage of its voter registration base with the “top two” and negotiate around the parties core issues.
Imagine the Green Party of Oakland saying this to the “top two” in a Congressional Race between two Democrats, “Look, we’ve got XXXX number of voters in this district. Here are our issues. You can no longer take us for granted, because now you need our votes to win this thing. So start telling us where you are on OUR issues, because we’re going to be making an endorsement and turning out our vote.”
Suddenly it would make sense to register Green, because it would represent collective bargaining power in the elections process to implement Green values. The Green party’s power, rather than simply being locked into running a handful of candidates as a protest vote that has no power, would be based in its voter registration base. The party would have an incentive to grow that base to maximize that leverage and would become a real political player.
When politicians have to compete for our votes, we win.