California voters will see a ballot measure on the June 8, 2010 ballot called the "top-two open primary". It is Proposition 14. In November 2004, California voters defeated a similar measure, Proposition 62. CfER opposed Proposition 62, and the CfER Board has recently voted to oppose the 2010 measure.

The top-two open primary provides that all candidates for Congress and for state partisan office would run on a single primary ballot in June. All voters would use that primary ballot, which would contain all the candidates from all the parties, and also any independent candidates. Then, only the two candidates who received the highest vote totals could appear on the November ballot.

Two states have already used similar systems. Louisiana has used it for state office ever since 1975, and used it for Congress from 1978 through 2006. Washington State used it for the first time in 2008.

In practice, the system seems to help incumbents get elected, to an even greater degree than under election systems used in most states. In Louisiana, only one incumbent member of Congress from either House was defeated for re-election, in all the 30 years the system was used for Louisiana congressional elections (except that in 1992, due to redistricting, two incumbent members of the U.S. House had to run against each other in two districts). In Washington, when the system was used in 2008, out of 8 congressional elections, 8 statewide state office elections, and 123 legislative elections, only one incumbent was defeated for re-election in the primary. He was a state legislator who had had a scandal and he probably would have been defeated for re-election under any system.

The system, as used in Washington in 2008, and in Louisiana for decades, hurts minor parties and independent candidates. Washington state had always had at least one minor party or independent candidate on the November ballot for either statewide state office, or Congress, through 2006. But in 2008, when Washington used the "top-two open primary", there were no minor party or independent candidates on the November ballot for any congressional race or any statewide state office race.

In Louisiana, in all the 35 years that the "top-two open primary" system has been in use, no minor party candidate has ever qualified for the second round. When minor party candidates are eliminated after the June primary, they cannot realistically campaign in the summer and autumn, the time when voters are most interested in politics.

The specific "top-two open primary" measure on the California ballot also contains a little-publicized provision that indirectly makes it more difficult for the Peace & Freedom Party, and the Libertarian Party, to remain ballot-qualified. Under existing law, the state's ballot-qualified minor parties (also including the Green Party and the American Independent Party) remain ballot-qualified if they poll at least 2% for any statewide race in a midterm year (they get a free ride in presidential election years). But under the "top-two open primary" system, that option wouldn't exist anymore, because it says no parties, major or minor, would have nominees any longer. So with the 2% vote test effectively eliminated (even though the measure doesn't repeal it, it would be a dead law), the only way parties could remain ballot-qualified is by meeting the existing standard for a new party to be recognized, that it have registration of approximately 100,000 members. Because the Peace & Freedom Party only has 58,000 registrants, and the Libertarian Party only has 82,000, those parties would be seriously jeopardized.

Finally, the 2010 measure even says that write-ins would no longer be counted in November for Congress or state office. This is a completely unnecessary curtailment of voting rights. By contrast, Proposition 62 in 2004 had at least provided that write-ins would still be allowed in the general election, and even specified that people who had not placed first or second in the primary could still be write-in candidates in November. Californians have always had a right to cast a write-in vote in all federal and state elections, ever since the beginning of government-printed ballots in 1891. The "top-two open primary" measure of 2010 would seriously curtail voter choice in November, would only help incumbents get re-elected, and would make our congressional and state elections sterile affairs.