California voters went to the polls on Tuesday, June 3, to decide which top two candidates would advance to the general election in several races. Initial results show a promising trend for candidates supporting individual voter rights.

California's nonpartisan, top-two open primary allows all voters and candidates to participate on a single ballot, protecting the right all voters have to equal access to elections. Across the state, candidates who have declared their support for nonpartisan primaries have secured a spot on the November ballot.

The race to represent Iowa’s 3rd Congressional District in Congress was crowded, at least for one party. Iowa held statewide primary elections on Tuesday and registered Republicans had a slew of candidates from which to choose, which splintered the vote and prevented a nominee from being crowned. The nominee will be chosen at a convention on June 21.

It is quite well known by now that there is two-party dominance in the United States because of the first-past-the-post (FPTP) -- or plurality -- electoral system. Third parties can have an unintended “spoiler effect” on contests by stealing votes from the ideologically similar -- but more viable -- candidate.

For instance, in Virginia’s 2013 gubernatorial election, Libertarian candidate Robert Sarvis siphoned nearly 150,000 votes from Republican Ken Cuccinelli’s total, which was enough to give Democrat Terry McAuliffe a 55,000 vote edge, and the governor’s seat.

On Tuesday’s closed primary elections in New Jersey, where unaffiliated voters were locked out of the process, party affiliates turned up in low numbers to elect their candidates. As a result, no surprises emerged from the electoral results.

Here’s the first question: did President Obama break the law when he released 5 prisoners from Guantanamo Bay in exchange for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the only American soldier held by the Taliban in Afghanistan? Yep, he did. No question about it. The law very specifically required the president to notify Congress 30 days before releasing detainees from the Guantanamo Bay prison. Obama signed the law himself.

He broke the law, and Congress is right to insist that there be consequences for doing so.

In the current political climate, new policy ideas are often stifled in favor of political entrenchment. As a result, candidates rarely challenge the ideas of their party, choosing partisanship over policy innovation. Yet in California, two candidates, one Republican and one Democrat, are challenging the norms of their party and grabbing national headlines doing so.

On Tuesday, Californians across the state will go to the polls to vote. It will be the second time Californians have voted in the state's nonpartisan, top-two open primary since it was passed by 53 percent of voters in 2010. In this system, the top two vote getters in the primary, regardless of party affiliation, move on to the general election to face off.

So who are the California races to watch? Here is the breakdown:

On Tuesday, June 3, many California voters will go to their local polling location to vote in the first gubernatorial election under California's new nonpartisan, top-two open primary.

Mailers, flyers, pamphlets, yard signs, and door hangers serve as ‘campaign literature’ to reach and sway voters before election day. With a limited amount of space, and targeting a limited amount of allotted voter-attention, these pieces of literature are like flash cards containing bullet points of interests that assume a greater knowledge of the issues they address.

“What limitations upon the right to bear arms are permissible? Some undoubtedly are, because there were some that were acknowledged at the time. For example, there was a tort called affrighting, which if you carried around a really horrible weapon just to scare people, like a head ax or something, that was I believe a misdemeanor. So yes, there are some limitations that can be imposed.”—Justice Antonin Scalia