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New from CommonWealth Beacon |
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NO DIVINE INTERVENTION: The state's highest court ruled that the city of Quincy cannot install bronze statues of Catholic patron saints on the facade of its new public safety building, a rebuke to Mayor Thomas Koch. Jennifer Smith reports on how justices determined the statues would constitute improper government support for a particular religion. |
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WHITE STADIUM: A day after the Supreme Judicial Court rejected a challenge to the White Stadium redevelopment project, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu celebrated the ruling that keeps on track a plan to use the new facility to host Boston Legacy professional women's soccer matches. Sam Drysdale has details for State House News Service. |
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OPINION: Massachusetts should follow enactment of a new literacy law by overhauling teacher preparation so educators are properly equipped to embrace the evidence-based methodology, writes Donna Thayer, a second grade teacher at Mason-Rice Elementary in Newton and a Teach Plus Massachusetts Policy Fellowship alumna. |
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The Download will be on hiatus for the rest of this week. We will return on Monday, August 31. |
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| | | By COMMONWEALTH BEACON STAFF |
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Familiar as that scenario might sound, it’s not Massachusetts’s history — at least not yet. It’s California’s. |
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Out in the Golden State, voters in 2010 approved Proposition 14, which replaced traditional partisan primary elections with an “all-party primary” system. Since then, more than 1,000 contests have been decided by funneling all candidates from every party through a single primary ballot and allowing the top two to advance to the general election, even if both are Democrats or both are Republicans. |
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Massachusetts voters will consider a similar change this fall when they go to the polls to decide on Question 3. So what can the results in California tell us about what to expect if voters here approve the measure? |
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This week on The Codcast, Chris Lisinski interviews Andrew Sinclair, a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, California, who specializes in American political reforms, including all-party primary elections. |
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Sinclair said the top-two system has somewhat increased voter turnout in primary elections, but by less of a margin than some supporters hoped. It’s had a “mixed” impact on moderating the field and encouraging candidates to move toward the center to appeal to more voters, he said. |
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General elections between two candidates from the same party have occurred with some regularity, especially in districts that already lean heavily one way or the other. That, Sinclair said, means “there’s no genuinely safe district.” |
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“If you’re going to have real competition in some way, [if] you’re going to try and encourage people to have to work hard to get your vote, then there has to be a risk that they might actually lose,” he said. |
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Sinclair doesn’t think changing the primary election system has significantly favored one party over the other or triggered a noteworthy change in the makeup of California’s Legislature and congressional delegation. |
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He’s also skeptical of the arguments raised by opponents that an all-party primary gives more influence to wealthy donors and well-funded candidates. |
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“This problem is really old,” Sinclair said about money in politics. “It works in lots of different kinds of systems, and so I wouldn’t focus on that as the bigger issue.” |
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Still, there’s a chance Californians will turn their back on the system. Democratic consultant Steve Maviglio is leading the charge for a new ballot question, which could go before voters in 2028, that would repeal the top-two, all-party primary and return to more traditional Democratic and Republican primary elections. |
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About 59 percent of likely California voters say the top-two system has been mostly a good thing for their state, compared to 39 percent who think it’s been mostly a bad thing, with Democrats tending to view it more favorably than Republicans, according to a May survey published by the Public Policy Institute of California. |
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“The challenge always is that you have to get these things through some political process where the voters really don’t like parties,” Sinclair said of the repeal effort. “That’s always been the dynamic — do you go more towards these types of populist reforms or away from them? It’s a lot easier to go towards them than away from them.” |
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In this episode, Lisinski and Sinclair discuss the political roots of California’s all-party primary system (3:00), the likelihood of a “spoiler effect” in which two candidates from a single party sneak through because so many candidates from the other party split their base (11:20), and similar campaigns that have unfolded in other states (29:15). |
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More from CommonWealth Beacon |
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ODD BEDFELLOWS: Both major parties, labor groups with significant political muscle, and groups that want to push state government to the left have all signaled opposition to a ballot question that would scrap the existing Democratic and Republican primary election system, replacing them with a single contest featuring candidates from all parties. Chris Lisinski breaks down the politics. |
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MAILING IT IN: The popularity of early in-person voting has decreased over the years, in part due to the surging popularity of mail-in voting. But as voters this election cycle weigh election reform ballot questions, early in-person voting remains an enduring and often utilized election reform in Massachusetts. Ella Adams of State House News Service reports. |
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OPINION: The opposition to the all-party primary ballot question has been very telling, writes Jennifer Nassour, co-founder of the Pocketbook Project and former chair of the Massachusetts Republican Party. Insiders like systems they understand, control, and benefit from. But the current system is not working for many voters, she says, and they have a chance to change it. |
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O'BRIEN-GOLDBERG ROUND 2: Former Cannabis Control Commission chair Shannon O'Brien filed a new lawsuit against Treasurer Deborah Goldberg and the CCC, seeking compensation for damages to her reputation stemming from her suspension, termination, and then reinstation on a court's order. (State House News Service via WBUR) |
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HEALEY CAMPAIGN: Gov. Maura Healey is making a point of emphasizing her public safety bona fides as she faces criticism from the two Republican challengers seeking to unseat her. (The Boston Globe – paywall) |
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TOMPKINS IN COURT: Suffolk County sheriff Steven Tompkins's extortion trial, in which he's accused of misusing his office to invest in a marijuana company, begins Monday and is expected to last two weeks. (GBH News) |
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HEALTH CARE: Jeromie Whalen, who's challenging US Rep. Richard Neal of Springfield in the Democratic primary, wants to push for a shift to a single-payer form of health care, while the incumbent is instead focused on protecting the existing Affordable Care Act. (New England Public Media) |
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CHALLENGERS: Two candidates vying to unseat state senators make a similar pitch: it's all about Beacon Hill's lack of urgency. (MassLive) |
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