In June 2010, California voters will be voting on a ballot measure to revise elections for Congress and state office. The measure would provide that all candidates run on a single primary ballot, and all voters get the same primary ballot. Then, only the two candidates who received the most votes in the primary could be on the November ballot.
Although The Bee has endorsed this ballot initiative, it is a bad idea. In practice, it would eliminate minor party and independent candidates from the November ballot. We know this is true because Washington state tried the system for the first time in 2008, and that's what happened. Washington, for the first time since it became a state in 1889, had no minor party or independent candidates in November for any statewide state race or for any congressional race.
When voters are voting in a primary, they are focusing on which particular Democrat or Republican they want to help. They have no time to pay attention to minor party or independent candidates. So those candidates haven't a prayer of coming in first or second.
Even Jesse Ventura, running for governor of Minnesota in 1998, only got 3 percent of the vote in that state's September primary, which was a classic open primary (any voter could vote in any party's primary; Ventura was running in the Reform Party primary).
But he went on to win the November election. Under the proposal that Californians will be voting on next year, Ventura and candidates like him would be wiped out after the primary is over.
Minor party and independent candidates are useful to society. Because they generally don't expect to win, they are free to say exactly what they believe about social problems and how to fix those problems.
The United States needs fresh thinking about our problems. But the election proposal would drive minor party and independent candidates out of the general election fall campaign, the time when voters are most interested in ideas for fixing our national problems.
Voters would be wise to vote "no" on next year's ballot measure. Incidentally, California voters already defeated this idea once, in November 2004, when it was known as Proposition 62. Also, Oregon voters defeated it in November 2008, when it was known as Question 65.
Richard Winger, editor of Ballot Access News (www.ballot-access. org) in San Francisco, is responding to the Sept. 14 editorial notebook "Here's one way to purify parties."
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