Can’t decide on a gubernatorial candidate? Let your Social Security number guide you | Opinion

If you are among the more than 1 million Californians who have already voted, good for you!

If not, you may want to consider voting strategically.

For Democrats, that means waiting until the last possible moment to cast a ballot, and then voting for whichever Dem is ahead in the polls, even if you would never, ever have chosen that candidate under different circumstances.

If your top priority is keeping a MAGA Republican out of the statehouse, that makes perfect sense.

For Republicans, it’s a bit trickier. Unless they manage to sweep the June primary, there is little-to-no chance of winning the governorship in the general election in a deep blue state.

A sweep is a tall order, but Leonard Wapner, a retired community college math instructor from Seal Beach, may have (theoretically) hit on a way to make a double GOP victory possible.

“If I were a Republican strategist,” he wrote in a letter to the Los Angeles Times, “I would advise Republican voters to choose between Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco based on the last digit of their Social Security number. Vote for Hilton if odd, Bianco if even.”

If conservative votes were split between the two candidates, that would give Hilton and Bianco 16% each, which could be enough to send them to the runoff, Wapner wrote.

Except, he wrote the letter in early May, when Hilton and Bianco were at the top of their game. Since then, the numbers have shifted.

For the first time in months, a Democrat — Xavier Becerra — has overtaken Hilton in the top spot, according to an Emerson College poll, and Bianco has faded to fourth, behind Tom Steyer.

Splitting the GOP vote would still give each candidate 16%, but if the latest poll numbers hold, that means neither would make the runoff.

Meanwhile, if Democrats were to follow the Wapner strategy and split their vote between the top two Dem contenders, they could lock out the GOP.

‘One asked if I was out of my mind’

Would candidates in a jungle primary really be able to math their way to a sweep?

Not according to political analyst Paul Mitchell, who finds the whole concept silly.

“There really isn’t that level of strategic voting,” he said.

The mathematician agrees.

“Republicans would never vote that way,” he acknowledged in a telephone interview.

He went even further, saying he intended his letter to be “tongue-in-cheek.”

“I thought it was an interesting scheme mathematically,” said Wapner, who describes his politics as slightly left of center. “I didn’t intend Republicans to take it seriously.”

Not everyone got the joke; some thought he was trying to boost the GOP’s fortunes.

“Two of my liberal friends wondered why I would submit such a letter. One asked if I was out of my mind,” Wapner wrote in an email.

Gaming the jungle primary

There are other, more subtle ways to try to manipulate California’s bizarre jungle primary, which sends the top two finishers to the general election, regardless of party affiliation.

Again, Wapner has ideas.

“Democrats might consider running ads promoting Hilton over Bianco,” he wrote. “Bianco’s poll numbers would fall, and Hilton would surely advance along with some Democrat. Given the nature of California voters, Hilton would almost surely lose.”

That’s similar to what happened in the 2024 Senate race, when Adam Schiff ran ads portraying former Dodger baseball player Steve Garvey as a MAGA menace, under the assumption that Republican voters would desert other GOP candidates and give Garvey the boost he needed to make the runoff.

Garvey did wind up on the November ballot, icing out Democrats Porter and Barbara Lee. Schiff sailed into the Senate, amid accusations that he had done his fellow Dems dirty.

Leave your Social Security card in your wallet

Voting in a primary election never used to be this complicated. We voted for our favorite candidate, period.

So let’s get rid of the jungle primary and go back to partisan voting, just as we do in the presidential election.

Think of the angst we would be spared.

There would be no panicking over the number of candidates in the race. It wouldn’t matter if two or 22 sought their party’s nomination; one would be guaranteed a spot.

Party leaders would not feel the need to pressure candidates into dropping out.

Voters would not have to stress out about possibly ruining their party’s chance to make the final.

And come November, we would be offered a clear choice, rather than limited to choosing between two like-minded candidates.

Strategy is fine for playing poker, but when it comes to elections, we need a certain degree of predictability that we don’t get with the jungle primary.

Let’s dump it — and leave Social Security numbers out of the voting equation.

This story was originally published May 20, 2026 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Can’t decide on a gubernatorial candidate? Let your Social Security number guide you | Opinion."