Dan Walters: Voters may get second try at election reform

Sacramento Bee ^ | 4/27/10 | Dan Walters

[SmithL]

The very liberal leadership of the California Democratic Party and the equally conservative hierarchy of the California Republican Party agree on virtually nothing, but they equally despise efforts to create some form of "open" primary election.

Party activists – leftist Democrats and rightist Republicans – loathe the idea that voters who don't share their ideologies could choose candidates.

Political reformers persuaded voters to approve one version in the 1990s. But it was in place for just one election cycle before being voided by the courts in a challenge by the two parties. By and by, however, courts endorsed another version that emerged in Washington state, one in which all candidates for an office would appear on one primary election ballot and the top two vote-getters, regardless of party, would face each other in the runoff.

Last year, as the price for his vote on a state budget that included new taxes, Republican Sen. Abel Maldonado insisted that the Legislature place a "top-two" primary system on the ballot, and after much gnashing of teeth, his constitutional amendment gained the required two-thirds vote. It's now Proposition 14.

[SmithL]

Maldonado, and his ilk, are doing their best to do away with the right of association in California.