Would California's new election system fly in Florida?

Last week the voters of California took a radical step and more or less abolished party primary elections. If it's true that what happens in California politics eventually gets exported to Florida, this raises interesting questions for us.

Starting in 2012, California will use a "top two" system. Every candidate, regardless of party, will appear on the first election ballot. All voters can vote for any of them.

The top two vote-getters, again regardless of party, will face off in the second election. There could be two Democrats, two Republicans, two independents, whatever.

In other words, California has wiped out one of the major roles of political parties: choosing party nominees.

The main argument for this change, supported by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, is it is supposed to produce more moderate candidates and reduce polarization.

After all, both Democrats and Republicans now cater to the most active and most extreme wings of their own party to get nominated — to the left for Democrats and the right for Republicans.

"Partisanship is running our state into the ground," said the ballot summary in favor of Proposition 14, promising "more practical office-holders who are more open to compromise."

Not surprisingly, political parties in California opposed the amendment. So did groups such as the teachers union, accustomed to having a major role in choosing party nominees.

Some of the arguments against Proposition 14 included:

• It doesn't work; other states (Louisiana, Washington state) that have tried similar experiments have not produced less polarization.

"Everybody assumes that independent voters are all these heavenly moderates," Richard Winger, editor of the publication Ballot Access News, said in an interview.

In fact, Winger said, independents generally tend to mirror the dominant attitude in their area anyway. They're not registered in a party, but they tend to produce the same kind of election results.

• The "top-two" system only increases the importance of money, since the finalists would have to pay for two full-scale elections. We might see even more rich newcomers like Florida's Rick Scott and Jeff Greene.

(I'm not sure I buy the argument that rich guys would be even better off. After all, Scott, Greene and California's Meg Whitman, who spent an amazing $71 million of her own to become the Republican nominee for governor, have managed to throw their money around pretty well under the current system.)

• The two-top system is a death knell for minor parties, which almost certainly will be shut out of the general election ballot to which they now have access. This might even lead to a lawsuit.

• Speaking of legal challenges, what about the First Amendment right to freedom of association? Can the government really dictate to a political party — which is, after all, an association of citizens — that it is not allowed to choose its own candidate to represent its political views?

Speculating about the effects of a "top-two" system is irresistible. What if it was already the law in Florida?

Gov. Charlie Crist wouldn't have had to quit the Republican Party to stay in the U.S. Senate race, driven out by a conservative challenge from Marco Rubio. He could have banked on finishing in the top two with Rubio anyway over Democrat Kendrick Meek.

As for the newcomer-rich-guy Jeff Greene, in the Democratic Senate race against Meek, he'd have to run against Crist and Rubio too from the get-go. Maybe he'd still carve out enough votes. Or maybe he wouldn't have run at all.

In the governor's race, the millionaire maverick Rick Scott has made some headway in the all-Republican primary against Bill McCollum by hammering on the Arizona immigration law.

But in a top-two system he'd also have to appeal to Democrats and independents. How would that race shake out among Scott, McCollum, the Democrat Alex Sink and independent Bud Chiles?

Florida's Legislature and parties will never go for this idea. If it happens here, it will be by citizen petition.

But it wouldn't be the first political trend imported from California to Florida. This could be our Next Big Fight.