IVN Editorial Board
Protecting the right to vote should not depend on which party holds power or which insiders are organizing against it. In California, a coordinated campaign is testing that principle, and three statewide candidates have refused to go along with their own parties.
Democratic political consultant Steve Maviglio filed the campaign, called "Undo the Top Two," in 2026. It seeks to repeal the nonpartisan top-two primary system California voters adopted in 2010 and drag the state back to closed partisan primaries, where only registered party members decide who advances to November.
The repeal effort is revealing, especially when looking at who has lined up behind it: Former California Republican Party Chair Ron Nehring and Reform California Chair Carl DeMaio stand alongside California Federation of Labor Unions President Lorena Gonzalez and California Democratic Party Chair Rusty Hicks.
These are figures who spend most of their careers attacking one another. But when it comes to keeping independent voters out of primary elections, they agree.
Their agreement comes at the expense of more than 5.3 million Californians registered as No Party Preference. These voters pay for primary elections as taxpayers. Under the repeal, they would be locked out of the first round of the elections they help fund unless they join a party they chose not to join.
Call it what it is. This is a voter suppression effort dressed up as party reform. The insiders pushing it are not trying to improve democracy. Democracy, by definition, is about people. They want fewer independents at the ballot box and less competition for the factions they represent within their political parties.
Against that bipartisan push, three statewide candidates have broken ranks. State Treasurer Fiona Ma, a Democrat running for lieutenant governor. Orange County Supervisor Don Wagner, a Republican challenging incumbent Secretary of State Shirley Weber. And State Senator Ben Allen of Santa Monica, a Democrat running for insurance commissioner.
These candidates may sit at different points on the political and ideological spectrum, but each believes independent voters deserve an equal say in the elections they pay for.
Fiona Ma
Race: Democrat, California State Treasurer, running for lieutenant governor. Independents in her electorate: as a statewide candidate, Ma answers to all 5.3 million Californians registered with No Party Preference, about 23 percent of registered voters.
Why it is nonpartisan: Ma is a Democrat putting independents’ access ahead of her own party leadership, which is helping lead the repeal.
Start with Fiona Ma. When the Independent Voter Project surveyed candidates on whether they support independent voters' right to participate in primaries, Ma answered a simple yes, even as her own party's leaders organized to take that right away. Her stance is on the record in the Independent Voter Project's candidate survey.
Don Wagner
Race: Republican, Orange County Supervisor, challenging incumbent Secretary of State Shirley Weber. Independents in his electorate: statewide, 5.3 million No Party Preference voters, about 23 percent of registered voters.
Why it is nonpartisan: Wagner is a Republican breaking with the Republican operatives behind the repeal, while his Democratic opponent would hand the decision back to the parties.
Don Wagner's break is just as pointed, and it comes from the other side of the aisle. The Orange County supervisor is a Republican and was elected as chairman by a Democratic board majority. While some of the loudest voices behind the repeal campaign are Republicans, Wagner has not joined them. He is challenging Secretary of State Shirley Weber, a longtime opponent of nonpartisan primaries and independent voter rights.
Ben Allen
Race: Democrat, State Senator from Santa Monica, running for insurance commissioner. Independents in his electorate: statewide, 5.3 million No Party Preference voters, about 23 percent of registered voters.
Why it is nonpartisan: Allen is a Democrat defending the nonpartisan primary against a repeal backed by his own party chair.
Allen has defended the nonpartisan primary against the repeal building inside his own party. Party chair Rusty Hicks is listed among the backers of "Undo the Top Two." Allen is not with him. He has chosen to stand with the voters who fund these elections over the operatives who want more control over election outcomes.
Put the three together, and a pattern emerges that should give the repeal campaign pause. Two Democrats and a Republican, candidates who often disagree, land in the same place when it comes to voting rights. That matters because opposition to independent voting rights isn't partisan, either. Republicans and Democrats both signed on to take the primary away from independents, and now Republicans and Democrats are both refusing to let them.
The line in this fight doesn't run between the two major political parties. It runs between people who want more voters participating and those who want fewer.
Ma, Wagner, and Allen have each decided which side of that line they are on. For the 5.3 million Californians registered with no party preference, the choice these candidates made is straightforward. Let the voters who pay for primaries get the same right to vote as everyone else.
The same split runs through the Assembly, where the fight over independent voters' rights has moved from campaign surveys to the text of the state Constitution itself. Democratic Assemblymember Stephanie Nguyen introduced ACA 24, a "Right to Vote" constitutional amendment, joined by thirteen other Assembly Democrats, including joint authors Anamarie Ávila Farías of Martinez, Lori Wilson of Suisun City, David Alvarez of San Diego, and Blanca Rubio of Baldwin Park, and coauthors Blanca Pacheco of Downey, Lisa Calderón of Whittier, Alex Lee of San Jose, Corey Jackson of Moreno Valley, Patrick Ahrens of Santa Clara, Jasmeet Bains of Delano, Mike Gipson of Carson, José Luis Solache of Lynwood, and Tina McKinnor of Inglewood. The amendment states a plain principle: the right to vote comes from citizenship, not from party registration.
If ACA 24 is enacted, independent voters would keep their place on the primary ballot no matter what happens to the top-two system. The repeal campaign could prevail at the ballot box and still hit a constitutional wall protecting more than 5.3 million Californians who have chosen no party preference.
Stephanie Nguyen
Race: Democrat, 10th Assembly District (Elk Grove and southern Sacramento County); lead author of ACA 24. Independents in the district: 71,019 No Party Preference voters out of 292,974 registered, about 24 percent. Why it is nonpartisan: Nguyen wrote the amendment to tie the right to vote to citizenship rather than membership in a political party, which protects independents no matter which primary system survives.
Mike Gipson
Race: Democrat, 65th Assembly District (Carson and the South Bay); coauthor of ACA 24. Independents in the district: 65,025 No Party Preference voters out of 277,808 registered, about 23 percent. Why it is nonpartisan: a Democrat in a safely Democratic seat backing the right of independents to vote in the first round, not just members of his own party.
José Luis Solache
Race: Democrat, 62nd Assembly District (Lynwood and southeast Los Angeles County); coauthor of ACA 24. Independents in the district: 57,456 No Party Preference voters out of 251,321 registered, about 23 percent. Why it is nonpartisan: another Democrat choosing voter access over party control of who reaches the November ballot.
Tina McKinnor
Race: Democrat, 61st Assembly District (Inglewood and Hawthorne); coauthor of ACA 24. Independents in the district: 63,705 No Party Preference voters out of 289,865 registered, about 22 percent. Why it is nonpartisan: a Democrat defending independents’ place on the primary ballot in a district her party already dominates.
That protection matters precisely because the top-two system is under assault. "Undo the Top Two" aims to tear down the structure that currently lets every registered voter participate in the first round. ACA 24 answers that threat more fundamentally. It does not defend one particular primary design. It defends voters' access to the ballot, and it writes that access into the document no initiative campaign can casually overturn.
The defense of independent voters does not stop at the Democratic caucus. Republican Assembly members have also backed independents' right to vote in primary elections, reminding us this question doesn't split along party lines.
Josh Hoover
Race: Republican, 7th Assembly District (Folsom, Citrus Heights and the American River corridor). Independents in the district: 64,097 No Party Preference voters out of 299,480 registered, about 21 percent. Why it is nonpartisan: Hoover won his seat in 2022 by defeating Democratic incumbent Ken Cooley under the top-two rules the repeal campaign wants to scrap, and he keeps winning a Democratic-leaning district by holding independents. His case shows that a nonpartisan primary can unseat an incumbent of either party when voters can choose from a full field.
Greg Wallis
Race: Republican, 47th Assembly District (the Coachella Valley and desert communities), one of the closest seats in the state. Independents in the district: 65,315 No Party Preference voters out of 334,683 registered, about 20 percent. Why it is nonpartisan: Wallis holds a true swing seat where independent voters decide the outcome, and he has stood with them on keeping the first round open to every voter.
Line it all up and the shape of the coalition becomes hard to miss. Democrats are authoring a constitutional amendment, Republicans are backing the right of independents to cast a primary ballot, and statewide candidates from both parties are refusing to follow the insiders organizing against those voters. The people trying to take the primary away from independents include a Republican former party chair and a sitting Democratic party chair. Defenders include Democrats and Republicans in the Assembly and on the statewide ballot. This is not a contest between the parties. It is a contest over whether the voters who fund these elections get to vote.
The harm of the repeal is not evenly spread, and that is where the voter suppression argument moves from rhetoric to evidence. As IVN reported in "California Latinos Showed Up. Now Party Insiders Want To Shut Them Out," Latino voters across the state have been registering No Party Preference in large and rising numbers, walking away from the party labels that once defined their politics. They are building independent power just as the "Undo the Top Two" campaign wants to close the primary to anyone outside a party. Repeal would hit hardest the voters who most recently claimed their place at the ballot box.
That is what makes the voter suppression charge concrete rather than abstract. A fast-growing bloc of Latino independents has chosen to register outside both parties. Under the repeal, that choice would carry a penalty: no vote in the first round unless they sign up with a party they have already declined to join. A campaign that strips voting rights from the fastest-growing share of the electorate, and does so just as that share gains influence, is not reforming anything. It is shrinking the electorate.
A coalition that predates it stands against that effort. The Independent Voter Project co-authored and helped pass the 2010 Top Two Primaries Act, the measure the repeal campaign now wants to undo. More Choice California has joined it, a coalition organized to defend the nonpartisan primary and keep every registered voter, party member or not, in the first round. Their case rests on the same principle the three statewide candidates have staked out in their own races.
The throughline holds across it all. Fiona Ma, Don Wagner, and Ben Allen come from different parties and different corners of the ballot. The Latino voters most harmed by repeal belong to no party at all. What unites them is not ideology. It is a simple question the insiders would rather not answer: who gets to vote, and who gets locked out.
The same question driving California's fight is being asked three thousand miles away, under even harsher rules. California at least lets independents into the primary. New York does not. The state runs closed partisan primaries, and it bars more than three million voters registered without a party from them outright. These elections often decide who holds office in the general election, held in public buildings with public machines and public money, and the voters who help pay for them are shown the door.
The people leading the challenge know how to serve the public, not a political party. Through its "Right to Vote NY" legal work, the Independent Voter Project has backed an effort led by military veterans including Paul Rieckhoff and Kristen Rouse, all of whom swore an oath to defend the Constitution and then came home to discover they could not cast a meaningful vote in their own primaries unless they joined a party first. They are pursuing the matter in court and in the public square, asking whether the right to vote flows from citizenship or from membership in a private political organization.
A similar fight went to court in a red state. In Florida, the Independent Voter Project joined Open Primaries and Andrew Yang's Forward Party on a friend-of-the-court brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to take up a challenge to that state's closed primaries, where more than 3.4 million voters registered with no party are shut out of taxpayer-funded elections. The plaintiff, retired attorney Michael Polelle, asks the same question raised in California and New York: whether the right to vote in a public election comes from citizenship or from party membership. Republicans govern Florida, just as Democrats govern New York, and in both places independents are locked out. The principle does not change with the party in power.
Set these states side by side, and the geography stops mattering. In California, insiders from both parties want to lock independents out of the first round. In New York, they already have. What connects the two isn't party or region. It comes down to one principle: whether voters who decline a party label still get a say in who reaches the November ballot. California candidates defending that principle and New York veterans fighting for it are tackling the same problem from opposite coasts.
In fact, nationally, this is a voting-rights case that only the Supreme Court of the United States can decide: The People v. The Parties.