These blended primaries purport to promote democracy. They're really anti-democratic wolves in reasonable-sounding clothing.
Far more voters turn out for general elections (42% in California's previous gubernatorial election in 2014), not primaries (25%). Blended primaries disenfranchise voters while placing a disproportionate amount of power in the hands of the few who turnout for primaries.
Despite the possibility of organized mischief-making, the threat posed by an army of Democrats cross-voting for the least-feasible Republican in a primary race (and vice versa) remains purely theoretical. However, there is a real-world concern: when a jungle primary shuts out one party from a major race like for governor or senate, it tends to depress turnout among the excluded party's supporters in the general election, which can have a ripple effect down-ballot, even on races in which both parties have a standard bearer.
Like it or not -- and I don't -- we still have a two-party system. Representative democracy would be better served by a more inclusive regime that broadens the ideological spectrum, whether it's rank-choice voting or moving to a European-style parliamentary system or something else entirely.
Until we think things through and have a new system to replace it, the current two-party system ought not to be insipidly sabotaged as though nibbled to death by feckless ducks.
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