Third Parties Say Open Primary System Harmful To Them

The Green, Libertarian and Peace and Freedom Parties have released an analysis showing California’s new open primary system is detrimental to the state’s smaller political parties.

Under the new system the top two vote getters in the primary move on to the general election. The analysis finds smaller parties are finding it difficult to collect enough signatures to place a candidate on a ballot and don’t have enough money to pay filing fees in lieu of signatures. The parties argue they can’t attract new members if they don’t have candidates on the ballot.

Their analysis found, in 2012, 72 percent fewer small party candidates ran for state office and 68 percent fewer ran for Congress compared to 2008, before the open primary was put in place.