| John Palmer | San Francisco Chronicle, Letters to the Editor |
Regarding “A Republican governor in heavily Democratic California? We should end the top-two primary” (Open Forum, SFChronicle.com, Feb. 23): Yes, the top-two primary has flaws. When one party has too many candidates, it creates anxiety and triggers insider pressure for some to drop out.
But here’s my prediction: Two Republicans will not prevail this year in the governor’s race. Democratic candidates will be nudged out, endorsements will line up, and the field will consolidate — as it always does. We’ve seen this movie before.
Returning to closed primaries would be worse. It would hand power back to low-turnout partisan electorates and sideline the roughly 1 in 5 Californians registered with no party preference. In a state where Republicans haven’t won a statewide office since 2006, the real election would become the June primary — decided by the most ideological voters.
The full array of choices
We shouldn’t scrap the system. We should improve it.
For a single-seat office like governor, California should adopt ranked-choice voting in the primary to advance the top five candidates, then use ranked choice again in November to ensure a majority winner. That would reduce insider “candidate suppression” and give voters the full array of choices.
Instead of empowering party bosses, let’s empower voters.
John Palmer, San Francisco