Independent voters can be heard in California. The top-two primary is worth defending

When Californians voted to open their state’s closed primaries back in 2010, both major parties fought them every step of the way.

Proposition 14 created a top-two primary, allowing millions of independent voters to take part in the state’s primary elections for the first time and letting every Californian support the candidate of their choice — regardless of party.

Republican and Democratic leaders, who rarely agree on anything, opposed Prop. 14 because open primaries loosen the control the parties have long held over who gets to run and who gets to win. A system in which every voter can participate is harder for either party to manage than one in which only its own members decide. 

So they fought it. First they tried to defeat Prop. 14 at the ballot box, and lost. Persuading Californians to give back voting options they had just won proved to be a hard case to make.

This past spring, in the middle of one of the most crowded and unpredictable gubernatorial primaries in modern memory, the argument found a new opening. With no clear frontrunner and far more Democrats than Republicans in the race, some worried aloud that the state’s two Republican candidates might claim both runoff spots.

In a heavily Democratic state, the prospect of two Republicans facing each other in November, guaranteeing a GOP governor, was enough to cause real anxiety. That outcome would have required every Democratic candidate to stay frozen in place through tens of millions of dollars in advertising and months of rising public attention.

As in every election, some candidates rose and others fell. The result — one Democrat and one Republican on the November ballot — is about as ordinary as California elections get, and looks nothing like the disaster that had been predicted.

But that brief possibility became the argument for repealing the top-two primary. A measure to do exactly that has now been filed, and the attorney general’s office has issued its official title and summary, the first step toward returning California to the closed primaries voters set aside during Barack Obama’s first term as president.

The title and summary describe what the measure would repeal. They say much less about what it would put in its place. There is no mention of the closed system that would replace the current open one. There is no mention of the roughly 5.3 million Californians registered without a party who would no longer be able to vote in state primary elections. There is no mention of the many more voters who would be limited to candidates their party has already approved. 

If the measure does qualify, the attorney general should describe the final language the way the voters would — plainly and completely — so that anyone reading it understands the measure would end their ability to vote in a primary they currently help decide.

California is not alone in this. The same fight is playing out at both ends of the political spectrum. In Alaska, the MAGA right is working to repeal that state’s open primaries. In New York, the socialist left is resisting efforts to open its primaries to more than a million unaffiliated voters. Even though these are different states at opposite ends of the political spectrum, the same instinct: keep the primary closed to everyone but the party’s own.

This is not about liberal or conservative ideology. It is not about which party, which movement or which group wins.

It’s about whether we have a real democracy, one in which every voice can compete fairly for representation. That requires every voice to be heard, and it requires it in the one place it fully counts: the ballot box.

It cannot happen fairly unless every voter is allowed into that ballot box every time a public election is held on behalf of the state, its voters and the taxpayers who pay for it.

That is what Prop. 14 sought to protect almost two decades ago. That is what is worth defending.