A Voting System That Favors Centrists

California Secretary of State candidate Dan Schnur, a longtime Republican, is “running as an Independent because there were two political reforms enacted during Schwarzenegger’s time as governor of California. They were below the radar but startling, the sort of reforms that are near impossible because incumbent politicians usually block them–but they were passed by public referendum and initiative in 2010, and Schnur was one of those at the heart of the campaign to get them enacted,” Joe Klein reports.

“The reforms are ingeniously simple. There is no more gerrymandering in California… District lines are now drawn by an independent commission to reflect actual community borders… Second, primaries are now multipartisan: the top two vote getters, regardless of party affiliation, face off against each other in the general election… Schnur and his colleagues may have actually created an electoral system that favors centrists rather than politicians who play to their party’s base.”