Which seems more befitting of the American ethic of fairness and individualism, the new system or the old one?
Effected Offices
Besides liberating the voter to register as he or she wishes, and to vote in the primary without restriction, Prop 14 has some other significant consequences.
The new law concerns elections to three types of offices. The first is non-presidential state and federal offices. This includes governor, and state and federal legislative offices. Secondly, the law addresses presidential elections. And, third, it discusses specific state and local offices.
In each of these cases there are two general issues of importance. One concerns what will be printed, or shown, on the face of the ballot. The other concerns ballot access, or how candidates and measures will qualify to be put on the ballot.
For example, with Prop 14 there will be no official party primary ballots, but only one ballot. On that ballot, there will be no designation that one candidate is the "official" candidate of any party. The face of the ballot will only show a list of candidates under each office, and each candidate can state a party preference or not. Anyone can state "Democrat," or "Republican," or "Socialist," etc. No party organization can veto or bar what a candidate chooses to state as his or her party preference.
Unfortunately, the law does not specify how a candidate will qualify to have his or her name listed on the primary ballot. Under the old way, only qualified parties could put their man or woman on the primary ballot. Independents could not participate, because there were no primary votes for independents, or unqualified third parties, such as Socialist, or Reform Party, etc. Some new laws must be written to fill this gap. Rather than giving qualified parties easy access to the ballot, every hopeful will have to meet the same petition signature requirements. For instance, to qualify for the primary ballot each person must present a petition to the Secretary of State with "X" number of valid signatures by registered voters such as 25,000 for governor, for example. In this case, signature gathering will be a pre-primary contest requiring organization, and either lots of money or lots of foot soldiers.
Ballot access is not a problem for the general election, because only the top two vote getters for each office will be on that ballot.
Presidential Elections
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