Why Undoing Top Two Would Be a Step Backward for California

Steve Maviglio recently posted a tweet asking a snarky question: How many independent candidates actually made it into the top two this year to be considered in California's general elections? The implication was clear. If independents aren't winning, the argument goes, then the state's nonpartisan Top Two primary system isn't really serving them, so why not scrap it?

It's a clever question. It's also a disingenuous one because the Top Two open primary in California isn’t designed to elect an independent candidate; it’s designed to allow independent voters to participate alongside party members and elect anyone they want.

Maviglio, a Democratic Party political operative, is the formal proponent of "Undo the Top Two," a 2026 ballot-measure campaign to repeal the nonpartisan Top Two primary that California voters adopted in 2010 and return the state to partisan primaries. His coalition is an odd bipartisan mix: former California Republican Party chair Ron Nehring, Reform California's Carl DeMaio, labor leader Lorena Gonzalez, and California Democratic Party chair Rusty Hicks.

Their shared complaint is that Top Two primaries sometimes produce same-party general election matchups, Democrat against Democrat or Republican against Republican, leaving some voters without a candidate from their own party on the November ballot. Now Maviglio is complaining the system does not produce independent candidates.

Maviglio calls all of this undemocratic. But look at what he's actually proposing to fix it. Closing California's primaries wouldn't give independents more power. It would take away the only power they currently have.

Here's the reality: more than 5.2 million Californians are registered with No Party Preference. Under a closed primary system, all of these voters would lose the ability to help choose candidates in taxpayer-funded primary elections. They wouldn't just have less influence. They'd have none, unless they registered with a party they don't actually belong to.

Most same-party general election matchups don't happen because independents are being shortchanged by the Top Two format. They happen because of how a particular district actually votes. A heavily Democratic district produces two Democrats in November because that's what the electorate there wants. A heavily Republican district does the same in reverse. That's not a flaw in the system. That's the system reflecting the voters who live there.

What Maviglio's proposal would actually do is hand control back to party insiders, the people who benefit most when primaries are restricted to registered partisans and closed off to everyone else. It's no coincidence that his coalition includes party chairs from both sides of the aisle. Party leadership doesn't love the Top Two primary because it dilutes their control over who advances to the general election. Closing the primaries again would restore that control, at the direct expense of independent voters.

And the timing could not be worse. California is in the middle of a real shift in how people register to vote. Voters are leaving both the Democratic and Republican Parties in meaningful numbers, including a notable trend among Latino voters moving away from party registration and toward independent status. These aren't fringe voters. They are a growing, diverse bloc that increasingly doesn't see itself reflected in either party. Locking primaries behind party membership right as more Californians are choosing not to affiliate with one would disenfranchise exactly the voters who are trending toward independence.

Independent voters are not a loophole in California's election system that needs to be closed. They are the fastest-growing segment of the electorate, and they are already paying for these elections with their tax dollars. They deserve to continue to have a voice in every publicly funded election, including the primary, not just the general.

Maviglio is now trying to frame this as a fight about fairness for minor-party candidates. It isn't. It's a fight over who holds power in California elections: the millions of voters who have chosen not to affiliate with either party, or the party insiders who would rather they didn't get a say until November.

Power in California's elections should rest with the voters, all of them, not with the people trying to write independents out of the process while pretending they are on their side.

That principle already has real backing in Sacramento. Fourteen California Democrats just introduced ACA 24, a constitutional amendment that would guarantee every voter the right to participate in publicly funded elections regardless of party affiliation. Their willingness to defend that right, even against leaders and political operatives from their own party, is exactly the kind of voter-first leadership California can be proud of.