Open Primaries

There is one indisputable truth about California’s nonpartisan, top-two open primary: It has completely shaken up the political landscape in the Golden State.

Leading top-two researchers Christian Grose, professor at USC, and Dr. Charles Munger, Jr. of Stanford University, discussed in detail how transformative nonpartisan primaries have been in California during a recent Zoom conference call hosted by Open Primaries and the USC Schwarzenegger Institute. 

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A Florida initiative to implement a nonpartisan, top-two open primary for governor, state cabinet, and legislative elections has cleared the 766,200 signature requirement to appear on the 2020 ballot, according to the Florida Division of Elections. If approved by voters, all voters and candidates would participate on a single primary ballot in these elections, regardless of party affiliation, including the state's 3.7 million registered independent voters.

For over twenty years, political party insiders in Florida have been conspiring against the voters to stop them from establishing open primaries. But the tide is turning.  

On November 19, a California judge will hear arguments to determine whether California’s presidential primary rules violate the constitutional rights of California’s 5.6 million “no party preference” voters.

There are now over 5.4 million No Party Preference (NPP) voters in California. They represent the fastest growing segment of the electorate and are the second largest voting bloc in California.

In 2016, however, there was widespread confusion over the rules that govern who can and cannot vote in the taxpayer-funded and publicly administered election process. 

California forces voters to affiliate with a private political party in order to participate in its presidential primaries, and as a result, we are seeing the first significant decline in registered No Party Preference (NPP) voters in several reporting cycles.

The three contenders challenging President Donald Trump for the GOP nomination in 2020 -- former Massachusetts Governor Bill Weld, former South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, and former Illinois US Rep. Joe Walsh -- shared a stage at the 2019 Politicon in the last weekend of October. There was a lot of talk of Donald Trump. The conversation opened talking about impeachment, the word "traitor" was thrown around, followed by conversations about economic issues and foreign policy.