As the ‘post mortems’ have been written about the massive defeat of all of the substantive measures on Tuesday’s special election ballot, most credible observers of California politics have concluded that a large part of the reason that the measures lost is that to the electorate, they represented the results of a consummate “insiders game.” There is no doubt in my mind that these measures, which were more or less designed to try, as best as possible, to maintain the status quo in Sacramento by patching together a number of disparate and, frankly, ill-conceived policy ideas that seemed to have as their one common theme the appeasement of the interest groups that dominate the politic scene (and political financial giving) in state politics.
Voters should be aware of the fact that while they have dispatched most of the terrible ballot measures produced by last February’s ill-fated budget deal, that resulted in massive tax increases but did nothing to solve the state’s structural budget troubles, that there is one more “gift” from Capitol insiders – it is commonly referred to by its proponents and by the main stream media as an “open primary” measure – but as you will read today in two exclusive columns – one from Keith Carlson, the Treasurer of the California Republican Party entitled, Onto The Next Battle – The Battle For Ideas: Rejecting A “Closed General Election” System; the other from Harmeet Dhillon, last year’s Republican nominee in San Francisco’s 13th Assembly District entitled, The So-Called “Open” Primary: Bad News For Democracy; A Limitation On Citizen Choice.
Here at the FlashReport, we will be devoting a lot of time to debunking the myth that somehow this measure is about widening citizen participation or somehow making the situation in Sacramento better. In fact, and as you will read in these first two columns that we are presenting on this issue – this measure actually does the opposite.
Going forward, we’ll shine a flashlight on how this heinous attack on the time-tested American system of elections was placed on the ballot, and why its most immediate impact, if passed, would be vast increases in taxes coming out of the legislature.
The only thing that should be “open” for this closed general election measure is the trashcan. That’s where voters put Propositions 1A-1E, and that is where the Closed General Election measure should go as well.
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