Top-Two Primaries, Third Parties, and the Rights of Individual Voters
![image](/_next/image?url=%2FIVN_Vote_Default_Image.webp&w=3840&q=75)
Author: 420 Times
California’s revolutionary top-two nonpartisan system, adopted as Proposition 14 in 2010, is not revolutionary at all. In fact, it’s almost the exact system we have had in San Diego for a long, long time—except for two critical differences here:
- If a candidate gets more than 50 percent in the primary, we don’t even hold a general election. In other words, if a majority of voters who come out to the polls in the June primary agree on any one candidate, the general election voters don’t even matter.
- We don’t include the candidate’s party preference next to their name—so uninformed voters don’t know which party a candidate prefers.
Editor's note: This article originally published on the San Diego City Beat on October 21, 2015, and has been modified slightly for publication on IVN.
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