California voters made a deliberate choice back in 2010, and it’s a choice now facing a fresh challenge. When the state adopted its top-two primary system through Proposition 14, both major political parties fought bitterly against it. That opposition hasn’t disappeared — it has simply resurfaced.
Prop. 14 opened California’s primary elections to millions of independent voters for the first time, letting residents support any candidate regardless of party affiliation in the primary round. Democratic and Republican leaders, despite their many disagreements, found common cause in opposing the measure. An open primary system dilutes the influence parties have traditionally wielded over which candidates advance and which don’t. When every registered voter can weigh in, party insiders lose a measure of control they once took for granted.
The parties tried to stop Prop. 14 at the ballot box and failed. Asking Californians to surrender voting rights they had just secured turned out to be an unpersuasive pitch.
This past spring, however, a new argument emerged during a crowded and unusually unpredictable primary race for governor. With no dominant frontrunner and a Democratic field far larger than the Republican one, some observers raised concerns that California’s two GOP candidates might end up capturing both spots in the November runoff — effectively guaranteeing a Republican governor in a heavily Democratic state.
That scenario would have required every single Democratic candidate to remain deadlocked through months of costly advertising and mounting public scrutiny. As happens in any campaign, the field shifted as the race progressed. In the end, one Democrat and one Republican advanced to the general election ballot — a thoroughly typical result for California, nothing like the feared outcome.
Yet that fleeting possibility has now become fuel for a renewed push to scrap the top-two primary altogether. A ballot measure aiming to do just that has been filed, and the state attorney general’s office has issued its official title and summary — the first procedural step toward reviving the closed primary system Californians moved away from during Barack Obama’s first term in the White House.
That title and summary spell out what the measure would eliminate, but they say far less about what would take its place. Nowhere does it mention the closed system that would replace the current one. Nowhere does it mention the roughly 5.3 million Californians registered without party affiliation who would lose their ability to vote in state primaries. Nor does it mention the far larger number of voters who would find themselves limited to whichever candidates their party has already blessed.
Should this measure qualify for the ballot, the attorney general’s office owes voters language that reflects reality — plain, complete and honest about the fact that passage would strip millions of Californians of a role they currently play in choosing who appears on the general election ballot.
California isn’t alone in grappling with this tension. Similar battles are unfolding on opposite ends of the political map. In Alaska, conservative activists aligned with the MAGA movement are pushing to repeal that state’s open primary system. In New York, progressive and socialist-aligned Democrats are resisting efforts to extend primary voting rights to more than a million unaffiliated residents. Different states, different ideologies, yet the same underlying impulse: keep primary elections restricted to loyal party members only.
This isn’t fundamentally a question of left versus right, or which faction comes out ahead politically. It’s a question of whether democracy functions as it should — whether every voter has a genuine opportunity to help decide who represents them. That principle only holds if everyone gets a seat at the table where it matters most: the ballot box.
Fairness demands that every eligible voter be allowed to participate whenever a public election is held using taxpayer dollars and public resources. Anything less undermines the basic premise of representative government.
That principle is exactly what Proposition 14 was designed to safeguard nearly two decades ago. It remains worth protecting today.
Original source: CalMatters
