Confusion unrelated to ‘top 2’ system on listless primary day
The biggest blip in the blase primary election had nothing to do with the new “top two” voting method that some said would cause widespread confusion when it premiered on ballots across California on Tuesday.
The confusion happened in a small garage in San Francisco’s Outer Sunset District, where a voter filled out a “no party preference” ballot without realizing that that those ballots offered no choice for president.
“She votes, she feeds it into the machine, she leaves — and five minutes later comes back when she realized the president wasn’t on the ballot,” said poll worker Alvin Zhou, 16. “She was mad.”
It could happen to anyone. Her confusion had to do with the complexities of declining to state a party preference, not the new voting method in which statewide, legislative and congressional candidates from all parties appear on the same ballot, instead of separate party ballots.
More choices
It’s called “top two” because the two top vote-getters, regardless of party, face off against each other in the November general election. California voters approved the new approach in 2010, as Proposition 14. Its backers offered it as a way for voters to have more choices instead of locking themselves in by party.
“I love change,” said Mila De Asis, 63, of San Francisco’s Westwood Park neighborhood as she walked her dog after voting. “I think it’s more understandable.”
Far weirder than encountering a new type of ballot was being the only voter at his polling place, said Jonathan Stockhus, 24, of Daly City. By late afternoon, he was the ninth person who had voted at his City Hall polling site.
As for “top two” voting, Stockhus said he liked the variety of choices. A recent graduate of San Francisco State University, Stockhus said he was more interested in a candidate’s profession than his political party. He voted for teachers.
“I wasn’t able to register for a lot of classes at State,” he said. “Maybe if a teacher won, they’d stop cutting education.”
Even so, he said, he didn’t actually vote for anyone outside his party.
San Francisco voter Josh Weinberg said that far from being confused, he was simply irritated by the new approach.
“I hate these nonstandard voting methods,” he said after voting at the firehouse on Ocean Avenue across from City College of San Francisco. “Ranked-choice voting so annoys me that I won’t ever fill out the second and third choices.
“We should be able to vote, and the person who gets the most votes should win. How complicated is that?”
Weinberg did scratch his head at first, wondering what Republicans were doing on his ballot. But he just shrugged, hunted for his candidates, and inked the arrows.
Nostalgic voter
Over in Parkmerced, a lakeside neighborhood in San Francisco’s southwest corner, poll inspector Kathy Holly recalled one voter who came in Tuesday morning and declared that she preferred the old voting method.
“But she was talking about when you could pull a curtain across the voting booth,” laughed Holly, a musician who happens to be the granddaughter of San Francisco’s 29th mayor, P.H. McCarthy, who won office in 1909.
Just then, Thelma Cheatham, 74, emerged from a voting booth, slid her pages into the counting machine, and paused to consider the new “top two.”
“I didn’t notice,” she confessed after a minute. “It seemed the same.”
As for the voter in the Outer Sunset who chose a “no party preference” ballot that didn’t have a presidential option, election experts at the Secretary of State’s Office said that under the “top two” system, the woman actually had more choices than in past primary elections. No-party preference ballots now let people vote for statewide seats, the state Legislature, and for Congress.
It didn’t make the woman feel any better, though, poll worker Micah Rothenbuhler said. “She was pretty upset.”