California Democratic Party Chair Rusty Hicks announced plans to place a measure on the November 2026 ballot to revise or repeal the state's top-two open primary system. Hicks said he wants an alternative primary structure put before voters as early as that election.

"The current system we have does not work. It needs to be revised or repealed," Hicks said. "It could be done as early as 2026, but it could be done in a future election as well."

California's open primary, sometimes called the jungle primary, allows voters to cast ballots for any candidate and advances the top two vote-getters to the general election regardless of party. The state's next primary election is scheduled for June 2.

The system was part of a package of electoral reform measures championed by Arnold Schwarzenegger at the end of his governorship in 2010 and was adopted in haste to resolve a short-term budgeting impasse. The reform aimed to give independent voters more influence, cultivate consensus-driven candidates with cross-party appeal, make races more competitive, and encourage higher voter turnout.

California Democrats hold a two-to-one voter registration advantage over Republicans, maintain supermajorities in both houses of the state legislature, and have not lost an election for statewide office since 2006. Sara Sadhwani, a political science professor at Pomona College and member of the state redistricting commission, questioned whether the system has met its original goals.

"It was supposed to be a way of getting moderation, and an opportunity not to have one party dominate. The reality is that, despite the top-two primary, we have one-party domination in California and not a whole lot of moderation," Sadhwani said.

Several races have produced outcomes at odds with district demographics under the system. In 2012, two white Republicans running for a U.S. House seat in Redlands qualified for the general election even though the district was majority Democrat and majority Latino. In 2014, two Republican candidates faced off in the general election in a swing district in the Antelope Valley north of Los Angeles, instead of one Democrat and one Republican. In 2022, Republicans were shut out of a state senate general election in the Sierra Nevada mountains despite 60% of the primary electorate voting Republican.

Hicks framed the proposal in broader terms. "The stakes are so incredibly high. We have democracy itself under attack, and the United States [is no longer] the beacon of hope for democracies around the world the way it once was," he said.

California briefly ran a blanket primary, in which any voter could choose any candidate and one winner from each party advanced to the general election, until the U.S. Supreme Court deemed it unconstitutional in 2000. In 2020, Alaska voters adopted a model advancing the top four candidates to the general election with the winner determined through ranked choice voting, a system first advocated by the reform group FairVote.org. Alaska's Republican Party tried to repeal that model in 2024 and is trying again in 2026.