In California, every candidate for governor, the Senate, the Assembly, and most local offices runs on the same primary ballot, regardless of party. Voters can pick anyone. The top two finishers advance to November. 

Critics call this a "jungle primary.”

We call it democracy.

Right now, the naysayers referring to "Top Two" as a “jungle primary” are pushing that pejorative term even more loudly than usual. 

The Guardian reports that the chair of the California Democratic Party says he wants to get rid of the Top Two primary altogether, calling it a failure.

“The current system we have does not work,” Rusty Hicks said in an interview. “It needs to be revised or repealed.”

Fox News has also been using the pejorative term to describe the primary. 

Operatives from the two major parties that disagree on almost everything else seem to have aligned on the same piece of vocabulary, and their goal is exactly the same. 

They want to manipulate voters into believing California's nonpartisan election system is broken, so they can dismantle it and close the primaries to everyone but partisans.

The honest answer is to acknowledge that yes, it is a jungle out there. But a jungle is the only place where every animal is welcome, and where there is a competition for survival. 

The alternative to a jungle primary is a zoo, where partisan powerbrokers and political operatives try to put voters in cages. In closed primary elections, these powerbrokers lock the door on independent voters.

We call that a taxpayer-funded zoo, with private zookeepers.

California has been at the leading edge of individual voter rights for 115 years, for a reason. You could say it’s in our political DNA.

In 1911, under Governor Hiram Johnson, voters adopted a sweeping package of Progressive Era reforms designed to break the Southern Pacific Railroad and the kind of partisan monopolies that had stifled political competition and taken over New York under Tammany Hall, Chicago under the Cook County organization, and Jersey City under the Hague machine. 

That same year, California forged a different path, establishing direct primaries and nonpartisan structures for local, judicial, and school elections, putting power back into the hands of its voters.

Then, in 1989, the Supreme Court in Eu v. San Francisco County Democratic Central Committee struck down California's prohibition on party endorsements in nonpartisan races. That ruling let organized party influence creep back into the local elections that the 1911 reformers had cleaned up. 

In 1996, California voters tried again. They passed Proposition 198, which created a "blanket primary" letting any voter participate in any party's primary regardless of registration.

This time, BOTH major parties teamed up to sue, joined by the Libertarian and Peace and Freedom parties. In California Democratic Party v. Jones, the Supreme Court struck down the law in 2000 in a 7-2 decision because it forced parties to allow non-members to pick their nominees. 

But Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority, did more than reject Prop 198. He laid out a viable constitutional alternative in the same opinion: namely a "nonpartisan blanket primary" in which voters do not select any party's nominee but simply choose the top two finishers, regardless of political party.

Ten years later, California voters took Justice Scalia at his word and passed Proposition 14 (Nonpartisan Top-Two Primaries).

The nonpartisan primary was approved by California voters in 2010, despite opposition from both major political parties. It was the next step in restoring the nonpartisan structure statewide. 

Nevertheless, the same forces that lost in 1911 and 2010 are now using the term "jungle primary" to try and set up a return to the Tammany Hall era.

The current fear narrative is that California's fragmented Democratic field will let two Republicans advance to November in the governor's race. 

The polling driving that story came from a survey commissioned by the California Democratic Party itself and released by the party chair. CalMatters reported that Chair Hicks has relied on party-commissioned polls to pressure candidates out of the race.

The math in no way justifies the fear. 

The most recent nonpartisan Independent Voter Project poll, screened against verified past voting behavior rather than self-reported intent, shows Xavier Becerra leading at 23%, Steve Hilton at 19.7%, and Chad Bianco at 16.7%. 

Republican voters have, for the most part, already made up their minds. Democratic and independent voters, who make up the overwhelming share of the undecided pool, are still choosing among the Democrats.

As IVN reported, Bianco and Hilton have likely hit their support ceilings. And when Democratic candidates drop out, like Eric Swalwell and Betty Yee just did, our polling shows that their voters move to other Democrats, not to Bianco or Hilton.

Yes, a two-Republican runoff is mathematically possible, but the probability of it actually happening is close to nil.

But fear drives attention and fundraising, which is why you continue to hear the partisan Democrats like Hicks say that two Republicans could block any Democratic candidate from making it to the Top 2.

The reason both parties keep coming back to this fight is not chaos. It is control.

Independent and No Party Preference voters now make up more than a fourth of California's electorate, and that share is growing by the day. They are the largest bloc neither party can direct. In a closed primary, like the one now being championed by Hicks, they would be completely locked out. In a nonpartisan Top Two, they are the deciders.

A jungle is where every animal is welcome. A zoo is where the dominant species holds the keys. 

We say embrace the jungle. Let every voter run free.