John E Palmer
California’s gubernatorial race currently features well over a dozen candidates, including nine Democrats and no obvious frontrunners. In a state where Democrats dominate registration, that might seem like a success.
Instead, it has triggered a familiar panic: what if Democratic vote-splitting allows two Republicans to advance to the November election?
Cue the sky-is-falling rhetoric. Some Democratic officials are openly wringing their hands. Others are quietly doing math. And a few are using the moment opportunistically to attack California’s nonpartisan Top Two primary system.
Their proposed solution? Go back to closed primaries, where only registered party members choose each party’s nominee.
This would be a mistake.
Yes, the flaws in the Top Two systems are real. It advances only two candidates to November, no matter how large the field is in June. Independents and third-party candidates virtually never advance.
In crowded primaries, it incentivizes candidate suppression to mitigate vote splitting.
Listen carefully over the next two weeks. Party leaders will likely pressure the weaker Democratic candidates to drop out before the upcoming filing deadline. Even after that deadline passes, withdrawals and endorsements will continue.
The process is messy: voter choice narrows not because voters demand it, but because party insiders and big donors fear the math.
Meanwhile, Republicans, having not won statewide office since 2006, ironically benefit from having fewer viable candidates. A unified GOP could slip two candidates into November if Democrats fragment badly enough.
And yet, like Lucy yanking the football away from Charlie Brown, that moment never quite materializes. Democratic elites eventually coordinate. Candidates suspend campaigns. Endorsements are aligned, and donor money reoriented.
In the end, at least one Democrat advances. Often two do. And the feared two Republican general election evaporates.
But this pattern comes at a cost. Strategic withdrawal replaces open competition, leaving ordinary voters wondering why their preferred candidate disappeared under pressure.
Party leaders often argue that the answer is to scrap the Top Two system and return to closed partisan primaries. History tells us this means letting a highly partisan, low turnout primary electorate pick nominees.
Consider what that would mean. The most ideological voters in each party would effectively decide the November ballot. Independents, roughly one-in-five California voters, would be sidelined from the only election that truly determines our state's governor.
In a state where Democrats haven't lost a statewide election in nearly 20 years, the general election is often a foregone conclusion. Third party voices would again be dismissed as spoilers, and candidates would focus more on winning internal party battles than building statewide coalitions.
This is not progress. It is a regression.
There is a better way forward.
Rather than retreating to closed primaries, California voters should improve upon the nonpartisan foundation we already have. Two key changes would improve the way we vote:
- Use ranked choice voting in the primary, and
- Advance five candidates, not two, to the November general election, where ranked choice voting would again be used to elect a majority winner.
These improvements are tailored to single-seat offices like governor, where one person must ultimately win majority support statewide. Reforming how we elect state legislators or members of Congress is a different conversation.
Improving representation in multi-seat legislative bodies may call for different tools, potentially even proportional representation. That debate is worth having. But today’s controversy is about a single-seat race, and that is where these particular reforms fit.
Ranked choice voting in a Top Five primary would eliminate the panic over vote splitting. Voters could rank candidates in order of preference, allowing support for eliminated candidates to transfer naturally to similar contenders.
In a crowded Democratic field, supporters of lower-performing candidates could safely rank another Democrat second, ensuring their voice still influences which candidates advance.
Consolidation would occur through voter preferences, with ballots doing their job, rather than through backroom negotiations about who drops out.
Advancing the five top candidates to November would obviously expand voter choice and produce a general election featuring multiple viable contenders – perhaps two Democrats, a Republican, an independent, and a third-party candidate.
Such a ballot would reflect California’s political diversity far more accurately than a two-candidate contest shaped by insider maneuvering. Voters would see real options, not merely the survivors of a strategic partisan squeeze.
Ranked choice voting in November would ensure that the winner of the California governor's race commands majority support. Voters could rank freely without fear of spoilers, and the eventual governor would emerge with broad backing.
Perhaps most importantly, an incumbent seeking re-election knows that the first contest they face, the nonpartisan primary, includes the entire electorate, not just their party’s most ideological voters. That changes behavior.
Instead of governing to appease a narrow base, they must remain accountable to independents and moderates as well. When the full electorate is in play from the start, governing to serve the extremes becomes a risk rather than a strategy.
The answer to today’s crowded field is not retreat. It is modernization. Instead of empowering party gatekeepers, we can empower voters with more choice, less vote splitting, and majority-supported outcomes.
Let’s move forward from the Top Two, not back.