CA 120: California’s confusing primary voting process explained

While the Attorney General, Secretary of State and California Courts wade into whether former President Donald Trump will be on the Republican Primary ballot in 2024, California counties are in the process of mailing out ballots that will be sent the first week of February.

And even if Trump stays on the Republican primary ballot, there will be more than a quarter-million voters who have previously voted in a Republican Presidential primary who won’t find him on their ballot. And over 650,000 voters who previously voted in the Democratic primary who won’t find President Joe Biden on theirs.

Welcome to one of the most confusing parts of the election process in California: the Closed Primary.

While California has moved its legislative, congressional and statewide elections to an open-primary system, where all candidates from all parties are shown on the same ballot, the presidential elections still use a traditional primary system, with slightly different processes for Democrats and Republicans.

And this is made more challenging by the fact that this is the first presidential primary election California has had since transitioning to a statewide by-mail voting system, where all voters are sent ballots beginning in February – with a month to mail them in, return to a drop box, or go to a local voting center.

For voters who are registered Democratic or Republican, the ballot they receive in February will have their presidential race – it will be President Biden and some also-rans on the Democratic ballots, and Republican voters will get all the candidates in a big multi-way contest to see if anyone can dethrone former President Donald Trump.

But for voters registered “No Party Preference” or with a smaller party that doesn’t have its own primary (like the Reform party) their ballots won’t have any presidential election at all. And voters with the American Independent Party (upwards of 80% of whom think they are registered “independent”) will have some obscure candidates they’ve never heard of on their presidential ballot, as we saw in 2016, where nearly half of those AIP registered voters wrote in Bernie Sanders, one-quarter wrote in Trump, and 2% wrote in Mickey Mouse.

Welcome to one of the most confusing parts of the election process in California: the Closed Primary.

For voters who want to vote in the Democratic presidential primary, but are NPP or in a minor party without a presidential contest, they can simply request a Democratic ballot. But those interested in participating in the Republican primary must actually change their registration to Republican in order to be able to vote among those candidates.

For those who change their registration after receiving a mail-in ballot, there’s one even more confusing step. If they don’t relinquish their ballot in person, they will be given a replacement ballot – meaning that they will suddenly have two ballots in their possession. An opportunity for voter fraud? No, the counties will only count the first ballot they receive. But it is sure to be an opportunity for those who gain from voter-fraud claims to make a big stink.

For non-presidential campaigns, this closed primary gives us an additional opportunity to identify the true leanings of our large nonpartisan voter universes. We can look back at the history of nonpartisan voters and identify those who have requested a Democratic ballot, or re-registered Republican in a previous primary election cycle, to identify those who are partisan-leaning, even though they continue to register with a nonpartisan label. There are already a million of the state’s nearly 5 million voters who have an identified past partisan registration or voting history.

There is also a turnout impact for independent voters who pull a Democratic ballot, or those who re-register last minute with the Republican party – these voters are seen to have consistently higher turnout. It may not be the partisanship itself, but just a show of willingness to jump through one more administrative hoop before voting. Someone who goes through that additional trouble is signaling a much higher interest in the election than your average independent voter.