ELECTION DAY DELIVERS WIN FOR INDEPENDENTS.

Byline: Joel Fox

TWO seemingly disparate political events occurring thousands of miles apart Election Day had at their cores, similar themes. Minnesotans electing Jesse Ventura governor and Californians defeating Proposition 3, a measure that would have required voters in the state's presidential primary to vote only for candidates in the party in which they are registered, both signal peril for political parties.

The tag team of Ventura and Proposition 3's defeat pinned the political establishment.

Ventura's victory came at the expense of the Minnesota Republican and Democratic parties. As Minnesota political scientist Steven E. Schier analyzes it, Minnesota's parties' hold over the voters is slipping. He notes that party loyalty means little anymore and that Ventura's victory continues a trend of rebels bucking the state's party elites.

Ventura's appeal was strengthened by an extraordinary number of voters who came to the polls just to vote for him. Many voters registered on the day of the election, which is legal in Minnesota, but they ignored established parties.

Ventura got their votes. Exit polls showed 12 percent of the voters turned out solely because Ventura was on the ballot. Ventura's appealed to independent-minded voters who shun party identification.

California's Proposition 3 defeat came at the hands of independent-minded voters who want to make decisions without party constraints. Proposition 3 came out of the Legislature as an amendment to a citizen's initiative, Proposition 198, passed in 1996. Proposition 198 established a blanket primary in which each voter can cast a ballot for any candidate for a particular office, regardless of declared party affiliation. Voters questioned after California's June primary said they were quite delighted with their new power to vote for whomever they pleased.

Proposition 3 called for curbing that power for the presidential primary, permitting voters to cast ballots only for candidates in the party in which the voters are registered. The reason given for the necessity of the amendment was that national party bylaws do not allow convention delegates to be seated if nonparty members choose them.

Supporters of Proposition 3 argued that California recently moved its primary to early March 2000 so that the most populous state in the Union could have a major impact on the presidential sweepstakes. Without Proposition 3, the California primary would turn in to nothing more than a beauty contest. Both the state's Democratic and Republican parties endorsed Proposition 3.

No matter, 54 percent of the voters said no to the proposal.

Conventional wisdom slaps the blame for the proposition's defeat on the major political parties for not running an effective supporting campaign. Had Californians only known what Proposition 3 was all about, the pundits declared, they surely would have voted for it to give the Golden State its deserved clout in presidential primaries.

Others, more cynical, conjecture that state party leaders wanted the measure to fail so that delegates to national nominating conventions could be picked by party elites.

The Proposition 3 election result pleased political pros in other sections of the country who were afraid California would overshadow them. As Massachusetts secretary of the commonwealth, William Galvin gleefully said after Proposition 3's demise: ``The 800-pound gorilla has died.''

If California is the 800-pound gorilla, the voters of California and Minnesota, and the rest of the nation who demand a freer hand to rise above party politics make up an 8000-pound gorilla, and it is just waking up.

Despite conventional wisdom from wizened insiders, could it be that the voters knew what they were doing when they passed Proposition 3? Could it be that the voters wanted to vote for their favorite candidate for president in the primary, regardless of party?

Primary rules and party bylaws were necessary in another era when information on candidates was hard to obtain. However, in our information-accessing, high-tech age, voters can rely on their own capabilities to get at the political truths about candidates. They don't need the parties as they once did.

In the short term, California voters may be stymied by national party bylaws. But, if constitutional edicts prohibiting voting by women or dictating how senators are selected could not withstand changes in the popular will, party bylaws don't stand a chance.