… After years of partisan squabbling, massive budget deficits and general haplessness in Sacramento, voters grew fed up and decided it was time for a government makeover. One result was Proposition 14, passed in June 2010 and intended to help bring a new breed of more accommodating, less ideological lawmaker to the state capital. …
It was supposed to work like this: Candidates would run in a free-for-all primary with the two top vote-getters advancing to a November runoff, regardless of party affiliation. Absent the need to appease the most puritanical elements of the major parties, the thinking went, candidates would broaden their appeal to the many voters in the middle. …
Has it worked? In short, no, not yet.
New academic research, published Sunday by the California Journal of Politics & Policy, found that voters were just as apt to support candidates representing the same partisan poles as they were before the election rules changed — that is, if they even bothered voting. CONT.
Mark Z. Barabak, Los Angeles Times