Posted by Santa Rita Mom
a resident of The Crossings
on Sep 28, 2021 at 3:02 pm
Santa Rita Mom is a registered user.

[Post removed due to trolling/disinformation]

Posted by Leslie Bain
a resident of Cuesta Park
on Sep 28, 2021 at 5:59 pm
Leslie Bain is a registered user.

The idea sounds great, but the devil is in the details. If millions of INDEPENDENT VOTERS are disenfranchised during presidential primaries, is it still a great idea?

CA has a weird "modified" closed primary system. Back in 1996, voters approved Prop 198 to end our old closed system in favor of an "open" one. Yay for us! All registered voters would be able vote for any candidate, regardless of political affiliation and without a declaration of political faith or allegiance. But we don't have this today, why not? The CA Dem Party took CA voters (who are mostly Dems) to court (think about THAT for a hot minute), all the way to the Supreme Court. In 2000, the same "hanging chads" justices who gave us George W. Bush sided with the CA Dem Party to overturn the will of the voters. Afterwards, the legislature came up with our current "modified" closed primary system Web Link .

CA calls Independents "NPP voters" ("No Party Preference"). By default in a primary election, NPP voters receive "NPP ballots." I call them junk ballots, they don't allow a vote to be cast for a presidential nominee DURING A PRIMARY! Usually an NPP voter is allowed to obtain a real Democratic Party ballot, but not a Republican one. However, NPP voters need to be aware of this + know the exact steps to get one. Some wits call this process "say the secret password". I think it resembles a Jim Crow poll test devised to suppress NPP votes.

"The number of [CA] residents registered as NPP has been growing for years ... As of Oct. 1, 2019, there were nearly 5.5 million residents registered as NPP ... That marks 26.7% of registered voters, compared to 23.6% for Republicans and 44.1% for Democrats." Web Link

Unless changes are made, millions of NPP voters will be mailed junk ballots AUTOMATICALLY during primary elections. How many will use them?