The Coming Freak-out Over the California Primary

[Celerity]

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/02/millions-of-california-indies-banned-from-democratic-primary.html

If you thought the brouhaha over Iowa’s delayed vote count was the last complaint you’d hear during the nominating season, get ready for another in California on March 3. No, I’m not talking about the likelihood of a very slow count in the Golden State (more about that later), but about the increasingly loud complaints from the Bernie Sanders camp about the difficulties independent voters face in participating in this primary, as Politico reported recently:

Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders charged Friday that California’s primary system threatens to disenfranchise millions of independent voters whose support he has cultivated in the nation’s most populous state. Sanders said Friday during a press conference in Santa Ana that he and his team have been campaigning hard to reach California’s 5.3 million “no-party-preference” voters, who now represent the second largest voting bloc in the state at 25.9 percent — ahead of Republicans, who comprise 23.7 percent …

“Unfortunately, under the current NPP participation rules, we risk locking out millions of young people … millions of young people of color — and many, many other people who wanted to participate in the Democratic primary but may find it impossible for them to do so,” he said. “And that seems to me to be very, very wrong.”

The root of the problem here is that party preferences in California have become relatively insignificant thanks to the establishment via a 2010 ballot initiative of a nonpartisan top-two primary system in which everyone in the state gets the same ballot for sub-presidential contests that includes all the candidates competing regardless of party, with the top two vote winners proceeding to the general election. But voters are still asked to designate a party preference when registering, which makes those registration rolls a hot property for campaigns and other purchasers, and also guides the one partisan primary still remaining: the quadrennial presidential primaries.

snip

[empedocles]

1. BS worried? trump-like 'rigged' stuff getting geared up?

[honest.abe]

2. Reading that article was painful.

Yes, no doubt the Bernie gang will be pissed and blaming the system is rigged if they don’t come out winning big in CA.

[Walleye]

3. Making it too hard for republicans to screw with us?