Top Two Only proponents wage campaign of deception about the prior primary system in California being “closed”

Ballot Access News:

Martin Wisckol, politics reporter for the Orange County (California) Register, has this column about recent political science research on California’s top-two system. Unfortunately, Wisckol, like so many other otherwise well-informed people, says that before the top-two system was implemented in California, independent voters were not able to vote in major party primaries for Congress and partisan state office. I have sent him an e-mail about that.

And:

In the last two days, two very well-informed and sophisticated individuals, both of whom support California’s top-two system, have published assertions that California had a closed primary before the top-two system was implemented in 2011. The February 14 Los Angeles Times has this letter to the editor from Bill Bloomfield, asserting that California had a closed primary before 2011. Bloomfield is a very wealthy, politically active individual who ran a strong campaign for Congress from Los Angeles County in 2012. Scroll down to see his letter. UPDATE: to his credit, he sent me an e-mail shortly after this post was put up, saying he should have said in his letter the pre-2011 primaries were “semi-closed.”

Fox & Hounds, a well-known California blog for politics, ran an article on February 12, asserting that California had a closed primary before 2011. The article is by Marty Wilson, an official of the California Chamber of Commerce.

All Democratic and Republican primaries for congress and partisan state office were open to independent voters, in each election 2001-2010. But, proponents of the top-two system have spread misinformation about this so widely that even the three judges on the State Court of Appeals got it wrong in their January 29, 2015 opinion upholding the top-two system in Rubin v Padilla.

Recently at IPR:

Ted Brown of CA Libertarian Party Writes Letter to Editor About Top-Two

But Not When It Counts: A Critique of CA’s Top-Two Primary

California State Court of Appeals upholds top two only scheme, bases decision on factual errors