It’s a little different. The California system is a “jungle primary” where the top to finishers in the primary go on to face each other in the general.
This is something called “Instant Runoff Voting.” If no one gets 50%, then they use the 2nd and 3rd choices of the voters to push one candidate to 50%.
Here’s how it works.
Let’s say that we have 4 candidates with the following vote totals.
R 1000 - 44%
D 950 - 42%
I 200 - 8%
G 100 - 4%
Total: 2250
No one gets to 50% in this scenario. In a traditional system. R wins with 44% of the vote.
In the IRV system, voters vote for their “first choice” as well as their “second choice.”
If no one reaches 50%, the person with the least number of votes is eliminated, and a computer program allocates those voter’s “second choice” to the remaining candidates.
In the above example, let’s say that all of G’s voters second choice was “D”. Now we have
R 1000 - 44%
D 1050 - 46%
I 200 - 8%
Total: 2250
Still no one has 50%, so we do it all again with I’s voters. Let’s say that those voters were evenly split between D/R.
Now we have
R 1100
D 1150
Since only two candidates are left, we now 50%+
D wins.
That’s exactly what happened here in Maine.
R has the plurality after the first vote, but the two independents running are left-wing nuts and their voters presumably allocated the “D” as their second choice.
And we are under the illusion that we still have a democratic voting system because?
At least Maine formalized this. In other parts of the country they now, evidently, allocate the majority of newly filled out post election ballots to the D.
WOW!